Recapping the news from the sports betting industry this month, it was a busy and eventful weeks for many bettors world-wide, but the USA sportsbook customers appear to be the most affected by the latest developments in the online betting industry.
Starting with the breaking news of the federal indictment of nearly 50 people related to the online sportsbook Legends (sometimes referred to as Legendz), which left many thousands of bettors with money locked into the bookie's accounts and no way to place wagers or withdraw their funds in a timely fashion (or at all). You could read about the inducement on the web, basically the people behind Legends sportsbook are facing criminal charges of running illegal gambling operations. Naturally some bank accounts of the sportsbook were frozen/seized, but the worst part was that the heads of Legends were arrested and charged, which lead to the sportsbook stopping abruptly doing any business. The Legends Sports domains do not appear to be taken over by the U.S. government, but simply a logo is displayed, giving no option for customers to log in into their accounts.
The good news for those with money locked into Legends Sports was the arrangement made between the Legends management to transfer the accounts and balances from Legends Sports to the online sportsbook WagerWeb. Former customers of Legends Sports were given the opportunity to have their balances restored now at WagerWeb, sadly a 5x rollover is required before anyone could withdraw their money from WagerWeb. Clearly not an optimal solution, but better than what some other bettors are facing with WSEX, another infamous online sportsbook.
Note, neither Legends Sports nor WagerWeb (nor WSEX for that matter) have been or are on our recommended online sportsbooks list, keep that in mind and if you have balance transferred from Legends to Wager Web - do your best to meet the rollover and get out.
As we mentioned earlier, other bettors have it much worse than Legends customers - one of the first online bookmakers, WSEX sportsbook, also shut its doors this month, becoming victim of insolvency. Customers of this online sportsbook will not be seeing their money, something that they have been used to for at least a year or more. It appears the over the last months of existence WSEX made a few futile attempts to regain its former glory and get back on the profit side of accounting, but failed. A few days after the WSEX online sportsbook closed down, one of its owners, Steve Shillinger, an apparent suicide, although the local police is still investigating all angles.