[Scooter]

Stiff Guarding Henhouse: Rx for Disaster? by Parlaythis
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Stiff Guarding Henhouse: Rx for Disaster?
By Parlaythis
December 17th, 2003

Imagine Smokey the Bear burning down Lincoln National Forest with a flamethrower. How about Ralph Nader standing on his head on late-night TV, offering to eat a bug "if that's what it takes to drive you out of here in a beautiful used Corvair."

At the beginning of November, I saw, to my astonishment, that The Prescription, the Internet's leading "watchdog" site on behalf of sports bettors, was owned by a complete scoundrel dedicated only to lining his pockets - even at the cost of honest gamblers not getting paid. A couple of days later, "The Shrink" sold his company to a stiff.

In a situation reminiscent of the seizure of the Cult Awareness Network by its once hated Scientologist archenemies, Marty Jensen, an online casino entrepreneur and purveyor of scads of how-to books dispensing advice on beating various games of chance, would henceforth pour the Kool-Aid intended to slake the thirst of credulous Rx readers looking for a safe sportsbook.

While the definition of a cult is highly subjective, contracts between players and wagering establishments are intended to be relatively free of ambiguities. Most guys who play with books like the ones that advertise at The Prescription know zilch about electronic casinos, so they'd never heard of Marty Jensen before the official announcement on November 3 that he'd bought the site. No sooner did his past victims and other knowledgeable folks come forward to alert the sports gambling community than Marty's apologists - mainly his predecessor, Ken Weitzner ("The Shrink") and other Rx employees - swung into action to suppress evidence by locking forum threads and banning accusers, while acting as if the new owner had behaved in good faith or even himself fallen victim to alleged fraud. As recently as December 7, Shrink wrote that Marty "lacked the appropriate software which would enable him to draw the distinction between the honest players and the scammers."

So is Marty really a thief?

Well, yes, but he mostly stole from his Danish customers. If you're going to rob someone, it's a good idea to make sure they live in a faraway land and wear funny hats; that way nobody knows (or cares) very much about what happened and you can blame the marks.

In 2001, a Dane went on national TV to plug his website that instructed people how to make good money from Internet casinos by bonus hopping. His advice spawned a disproportionate contingent of Danish players prone to avail themselves of lucrative bonus offers proffered by various cyber-casinos, then stick around just long enough to satisfy the minimum wagering requirement. If a casino, like Marty Jensen's Twin Aces, offered $100 of matching funds on a post-up of $100, with a 5x WR on the total amount, a bonus seeker would cash out after providing exactly $1000 worth of action. Playing proper basic strategy in a game like blackjack, he could buck a house advantage of well under one percent, thus nearly doubling his money, on average.

Casino operators quickly grew to despise the Danes. By contrast, offshore gaming impresarios positively love the Swedes - probably from viewing the all-blonde Swedish Bikini Team in Old Milwaukee beer ads in the early 90's, and in appreciation of the Swedish parliamentary candidate who last year called for television broadcasts of porn all day every Saturday to boost the country's sagging birth rate.

In late August 2001, Marty Jensen's Main Street Vegas Group of web casinos, which included Vegas Casino Online and Las Vegas USA Casino in addition to Twin Aces, followed the lead of The Vegas Strip, which stiffed Danish clients out of several hundred thousand dollars a couple of months earlier, in June.

On about August 23, 2001, Twin Aces locked Danish accounts and e-mailed the following missive to complainers:
"Thank you for your email. The reason why you cannot access your account at this time is because it is temporarily banned. Due to discrepancies in the IP platforms used in Denmark, we have been forced to ban the entire country. All accounts will remain blocked until we can further investigate this issue. We hope to have this situation resolved by the beginning to middle of next week. We thank you, in advance, for your understanding and cooperation in this matter.
If there is any further question or comments, do not hesitate in contacting us again.
Best Regards,
Jordao Wolf
Customer Support Representative
Twin Aces Casino"

About a week later, on August 31, Mr. Wolf reiterated the ban, but changed the underlying rationale from IP platforms to a "business decision."
"Dear Mr XXXX,
Effective immediately all players from Denmark will be banned from our group of casinos. This is a business decision which we believe is in the best interests of our casinos. If you have a pending withdrawal we will study your play logs to determine how your account will be handled. We will inform you of our decision on a case-by-case basis."

Within a week, on September 5, Twin Aces changed its tune again:
"Dear Customer,
We thank you for your patience while we have assessed the situation. As you probably already know, the entire Country of Denmark has been banned permanently, by our casino. As such, this is how we intend to proceed. All money in your casino balance that can be sent back to your CC will be. We can only credit up to the amount that you have deposited on your CC and are unable to credit back certain ********** transactions. Any winnings will remain in your account for six months. At the end of six months, we will review all the accounts and most likely your winnings will be sent to you. There are several factors that we will consider when the accounts are reviewed in six months. We thank you for your understanding in this matter.
We will be contacting customers one by one to clarify the status of their accounts. Any future attempts to contact us will go unanswered.
Thank you for your cooperation."

Within 2 weeks, they'd gone from "do not hesitate contacting us again," to "Any future attempts to contact us will go unanswered."

Needless to say, no one received any winnings after 6 months. Players inquiring about their account status got this e-mail:
"Dear Customer:
We have banned all players from Denmark because we found malicious gaming in most of the accounts. We are on the process to verify the games on each account, the documents as well as many other important factors, such as gaming location, IP's etc. This process is lengthy and is required for us to decide a procedure."

No reviews were ever undertaken, nor any documents requested.
One wag wondered what "malicious gaming" is. "Is that like 'not losing'?"

Losers didn't get their money back, even though Marty's casinos withheld winnings. Effectively, this amounts to the reverse equivalent of ********** fraud by Main Street. Like when a bettor pulls back his ** deposit if he loses on his first-half wager, or charges back on his CC. Amazingly, Main Street Vegas' Webmaster, posting under the name "Felo," at Winner Online, the leading public message board for e-casinos, accused the players of CC fraud in attempting to justify his group's decision to retain losing bets. "Not all of the ones that lost during those days were refunded, mostly because after we banned all of the accounts the chargebacks we received from the Danish guys were just too big, so paying back the players who lost + being hit by their chargebacks was not an option."
Someone retorted, "Doing the RIGHT THING is never an option, IS IT?"

Four months earlier, the same MSVG Webmaster had impersonated a satisfied Twin Aces customer to flame skeptics and support a blatant shill whose initial post exulted over TA's timely payment of an alleged $50,000 win.
Reputable casinos that elected to exclude players from Denmark always paid them in full. Main Street kept all of the Danes' losses just because some of their countrymen allegedly charged back. MSVG paid no winners and publicly admitted to failing to return all deposits. Danes remained banned from Marty's casinos, but free to purchase his books telling them how to win. '

The online manager for Asian casino magnate Dr. Stanley Ho (not a "bonus Ho," I hope) rejected the fraud excuse cited by Main Street Group and other rogue casinos. In March 2002 he reprinted an e-mail from the fraud department at SureFire, a leading CC processor, naming 24 countries considered "high risk." Denmark did not appear on the list. In fact, Denmark boasts one of the lowest rates of CC fraud of any country in the world.
Dr. Ho's casino manager flatly declared, "anybody who tells you that Danish chargebacks are higher than any other nationality's is lying. Period, full stop. It just isn't true."

He went on to blame the casinos themselves for offering excessive bonuses: "The fallacy IMHO is that casinos that block Danes are not addressing the core issue, which is the fact they are offering an unprofitable bonus. Instead of blocking a nationality, they should set the bonus such that it is not attractive to bonus hunters. In our casinos, we have absolutely no problem with Danish bonus hunters (or any other nationality of hunters for that matter) because we set our playthrough requirements sufficiently high to discourage a quick hit and run."

Julie Sidwell, formerly of Gambling.com, and the industry's leading ombudsman, expressed incredulity at the transcript of a chat session between Rick, supervisor of customer service for Main Street Group, and "Majbrit," a player owed $4700, in her October 25, 2001 "Gambling Grumbles" column titled, "The Sins of My Neighbor," calling the conversation "surreal."

Majbrit asks, "I understand your right to abandon players from a certain country but how can you refuse to send winnings to people who have not ever cheated?"
Rick replies, "The fact is we need to protect ourselves from the impending wave."
Julie commented sarcastically, "Glad we cleared that up. It appears you can safely assume you will be paid provided none of YOUR neighbors cheat."

C.M. lists all Main Street operations as "Casinos to Avoid because of No Pay," in the Bet2gamble.com directory.
While Danes comprise the only aggregation stiffed en masse by Marty, other nationalities can count themselves lucky to be paid slowly, if it all.

Here's a sampling from the vast collection of slow pay complaints against Main Street:

"Twin Aces has owed me a lot of money for a very long, long time. I had a very Happy Thanksgiving, but I'm having a very unhappy New Year. That should give you all some idea how long it's taking for me to be paid."
"Not only the Danes have problems with these crooks."
"Waiting for a cash in of several months."
"They took two months to pay me a small $200 win."
"Customer Service says it takes 28 days for a check to get to the United States. That is total bull$hit."
"I filed a complaint with the IGC. I suggest everyone getting the runaround do the same thing, and maybe they will quit scamming people."
"They've been continually telling me on the phone and via e-mail that checks take up to 4 weeks to be delivered. Now they tell me it takes 4-8 weeks to be delivered and that I must wait 8 WEEKS!!!"
"VCO told me numerous times that the check was indeed mailed back in April. They gave me every excuse in the book and went on to blame it on Sept. 11th, saying that the US Mail is held up and scrutinized for suspicious packages. It's postmarked MAY 30TH... a full month AFTER they guaranteed me it had been mailed."
"They say I will be paid 'in a couple of weeks' (they've been saying that for a couple of weeks now) but I am beginning to wonder."
"You are not the only one who has heard this story from them."
"Cashed in, 4 days later receive an email saying my cash-in was reversed as I hadn't sent in id and authorization forms (I was never asked for them in the first place)."
"Twin aces are part of Main Street Vegas, I think. I played there and got paid but it took a few months."
"I don't see how a check can take over 5 weeks to reach me even if I lived on the moon."
"When I said bank wires take maximum of 5 working days to clear, they said that their bank was CLOSED for two weeks during Christmas."
"Unfortunately they frequently take a long time (three months is my longest), but they did pay. Also put out some great excuses."
"Still waiting for $250. Very creative excuses. Ain't holding my breath."
"I was also accused of 'lacking patience' because I thought that one month was a too long time to get paid."
"Hey Main Street Group - can you count to 9? It comes way before 30."
"I was, like, what happened with the 9 working days? Then they got pretty rude, and told me about lack of patience also."
"I've supplied all the documents they need, yet they are still 'considering' my withdraw. The sign-up match bonus never showed up after my first deposit. Avoid them if you can."
"Slow paid me for about 6 months."
"Among the slowest in the business."
"They are slooooooooow."
"God help you if you actually win and want to receive your winnings."
"His (Marty's) casinos took months to pay out to me. Many far fetched reasons for not paying. Once a liar, always a liar."
"Maybe they (Sun Palace Casino) should be called SCUM palace."

Based on his business practices, would you expect Marty Jensen's Rx to take a stand against sportsbooks that must await fresh post-up funds to finance their operations?

In the online casino biz, once your reputation is shot because of numerous slow pays and stiffs, what do you do?
Open more casinos under new names, of course. The Main Street family has now grown to as many as 6 casinos, including Sun Palace, Diamond Deal and Slots.com, although a CS rep told me the latter is owned separately. Telephone and server records indicate that MSVG hosts a number of other cyber-gaming enterprises.

In late 2001, Main Street Group began to "share facilities" with a new concern called Gamblers Lobby. Within 2 months, GL became a recurrent slow pay. An Rx poster told, "I have 2 friends who got stiffed by Marty. He is a scumbag. He was affiliated with Gamblers Lobby, always sticking up for them, even handling their support, and we know how they tanked."

But should you care if a sports betting forum is owned by a stiff?

Last July 31, when MajorBetting, then partly owned by a bookmaker who was also a partner in Prescription archrival MajorWager, emerged briefly as a target of multiple slow pay complaints, The Shrink observed, "There is no excuse for any sports book to slow pay, especially not one that is also a watchdog site!"
His head moderator chimed in, "This does not reflect well on the site."

What would a casino owner like Marty Jensen want with a sports betting information site anyway? As an apparent fish out of water, won't he likely remain content in a passive role?

Not likely. Marty has an extensive history of stealth marketing - working in concert with his employees and shills to debase forums with disinformation and lies, and using portals to steer the uninitiated to his casinos. He knew that acquiring a casino portal with an active message board was out of the question - that would be like Charlie Therwanger of Aces Gold infamy controlling The Prescription - but he pounced on an opening in the world of sports, where his name is little recognized. Already, he floated a trial balloon -shot down within a day or 2 by rebellious posters - by placing a flashing banner for Twin Aces and Vegas Casino Online on the Rx home page, in breach of The Shrink's earlier guarantee to the contrary. If you wonder who's behind the recent surge of "malicious moderating" at the Rx, characterized by deletions, locked and edited threads, and wholesale banning of critics, perhaps you need look no further than the new fuehrer. Upon announcement of the Prescription's sale, Shrink affirmed that Marty would conduct the hiring and firing of mods.

His deceptive tactics in misleading the forum at Winner Online hint at the possible future direction of Marty Jensen's Rx.

Marty and his cohorts did their best to conceal the incestuous relationships between Marty's casinos, the Main Street-hosted Gambler's lobby, and a couple of websites called "Paid to Gamble" and "Vegas Lobby." Joel Bess, who runs the latter, claimed in a February 2001 interview that "We provide a state-of-the-art resource for online gamers that actually looks out for them." Bess, posting under the name of his portal, posed as a high-rolling gambler while shilling for Main Street and GL as he promoted them on his site. Bess is also CEO of L.A.-based ShockWave Marketing, which handles marketing and promotions for online gambling firms and is reported to surreptitiously install highly intrusive spyware. Vegas Lobby pitched itself as an impartial referrer, but Marty Jensen sometimes posted at Winner Online under the "VegasLobby" moniker. Gamblers Lobby originally sent its e-mails from MSVG mailservers. Some players even had payments bundled from casinos in both groups.

On January 17, 2002, after Joel Bess touted then-new Gamblers Lobby ("I heard they have a big wallet behind them"), Marty's stiff shop, Twin Aces, was exposed as having the exact same Whois registry data as GL. Someone promptly changed TA's registrant and contact info, although both casinos remained hosted on identical servers, and VegasLobby returned to the forum to deny the Domain Registry evidence. In his later post, VegasLobby took time to remind customers getting slow paid by casinos using RTG (Real Time Gaming) software, including Marty's casinos, that "Patience is a virtue in this business."

When the first slow pay complaints surfaced against GL a couple of weeks later, GL's Charles Langston refuted the charges, inviting readers to visit the supposedly independent Paidtogamble casino review site, for which he generously provided a link, to see for themselves how his group was "getting a VERY positive response from Players." It appears that Vegas Lobby and Paid to Gamble are one in the same. Their registrar (TUCOWS, INC.) and server info absolutely match, and homepages for both currently display duplicate logos and "closed for renovation" messages. A poster recounted how he sent an e-mail to Paidtogamble and received a reply from Vegas Lobby's SMTP server.

When confronted regarding these obvious conflicts of interest, Marty Jensen, ironically posting as "VegasLobby," stated, "Concerning the relationship between Vegas Lobby, PaidtoGamble, Gamblers Lobby and Twin Aces Casino, it is not my place to discuss confidential issues on a message board."

Marty's minions like to frame vague excuses to justify his brazen stiffing of a whole country. Somehow, he alone fell prey to (take your pick) bonus abusers, fraudulent chargebacks, or even hackers. The Shrink avowed, "I understand they banned all the people from DENMARK at that time because of all the scams they pull."

Jaded sports bettors are well aware of the prevalence of scammers among their brethren, many of who try to pass themselves off as victims of gross injustice. But the incidence of CC fraud and chargebacks from Denmark is low. How can the casino set the rules, and then claim abuse? Why would only Danish hackers target Main Street, and why stiff all the Danes? Were they all hackers? If RTG was so vulnerable to hackers, or, as Shrink alibied, unable to distinguish scammers, why did MSVG wait 16 months, until December 2002, to switch software providers (to Playtech)?

The only fraud is Marty. Most of the bookies paying him ad dollars would vigorously defend their integrity if attacked. Where is Marty, then? Why won't he field questions or issue a statement? One stiffed player observed, "MSVG has used the 'silence' strategy in hope that people will forget." Marty Jensen did not respond to an interview request for this article.

On November 3, Shrink said, "I believe the new owner will give this baby the same love and attention that I have." Yet, on December 4, Weitzner, now officially "Public Relations Manager" (nice job with Bluegrass, by the way), backpedaled amid a cascade of complaints: "Marty is only ONE of the new owners and he is not as involved in the day-to-day operations as some of the others."

Recantations under duress don't carry nearly the credibility of volitional statements. It's too late for Marty to dissociate himself from his new "baby." Anyone who purports to buy him out now without demanding he first satisfy his debts would be just as culpable as he is. The only acceptable solution is for Marty to pay up.

Last week, developments appeared to briefly point in that direction. Shrink asked aggrieved players to e-mail him, pledging, "I will not let this die until these players are paid." Two MSVG casinos unfroze a woman's accounts worth $148. But on closer examination, it now looks like just another ploy in Marty's game of cheat-and-retreat.
By December 10, Main Street started waffling again. "Majbrit" didn't get the same treatment when he tried to grab his $4700. CS supervisor "Summer Blair" notified him, "we made an exception opening several accounts but we are not opening all of them. Probably in the future we will reopen these accounts, if this happens, we will contact you." MSV's financial department further clouded the issue by insisting, "each player will need to acknowledge to us that they have never charged back at any Internet casino. Once we have checked several negative databases and all comes up clean, we will then pay out the players' winnings." Crooked casinos have previously cited the super-secret "negative database" excuse to weasel out of paying. When Main Street locked winners' accounts and ignored them, do you suspect anyone might have charged back to at least recapture his initial deposit?

Putting the onus on customers to learn about Marty's supposed change of heart and send e-mails after 2-1/2 years, while forum owners race to compile lists of those owed, lets Marty largely evade responsibility. A well respected player advocate who posts as "Jyde" attests, "they moved the locked accounts with balances from the old software to the new. They know perfectly well how much is owed and to whom."

Marty must pay all the players in full - deposits and winnings. Anything less amounts to too little, too late. He should then pay them healthy interest or throw in something extra for confiscating their dough for 28 months. After all, he used it to build an evil empire.

Maybe he can convince one of his sportsbook advertisers to assist the cheated Danes. It would be the first time a book ever bailed out a "watchdog."

Right now, Marty Jensen's Rx resembles the defunct rag LVSN (Las Vegas Sporting News). Marty's Main Street casinos correspond to ESB, the notorious slow pay/stiff book and LVSN publisher that continues to aggressively solicit deposits. Shrink has assumed the role of Tom Somach, the "LVSN watchdog" who praised his duplicitous employer while trashing reputable books.

Marty Jensen's Prescription contains nothing unobtainable elsewhere. The Shrink is not in the habit of divulging Billy Walters' plays before they hit the screen.

Readers disgusted by the new owner's larcenous ways can flee to more open forums that promote free exchange of information between intelligent posters, like Bet2gamble, MajorWager, SSB and OGD.

By voting with your feet, you can strike a blow against a willful stiff without flying to Costa Rica to exchange bullets or kung fu kicks with a phalanx of heavily armed bodyguards. Maybe Marty or his sponsors will finally get the message.

I'm not the crusading type, so by no means do I recommend a boycott of Marty Jensen's Rx. If you decide to leave, though, don't forget to mention that you need to protect yourself from the "impending wave" of shills and stiffs, led by Marty's casinos themselves. You can always reconsider after 6 months - or never.
Meanwhile, just tell Main Street Marty, "Don't call us, we'll call you."

[Bluehorseshoe]

An 8 year old article? Why?

[justonetime]

Can you summarize the article? Not going to read that whole thing.