Online sports betting outfit WagerWeb has reduced the rollover requirements for accounts recently transferred over from Legends Sports. On Friday, it was announced that WagerWeb would assume responsibility for Legends’ player accounts, after Legends was indicted by the US Department of Justice and Panamanian authorities revoked Legends’ gaming license. At the time, WagerWeb informed players that their balances would be subject to a 10x rollover requirement, but affiliate SBR reported on Monday that this requirement has been halved to 5x. WagerWeb also claims to be working on resolving account balance discrepancies that arose from (a) Legends customers who’d requested withdrawals immediately prior to the book shutting down and (b) currency conversion.
In less upbeat news, Steve Schillinger (pictured right), co-founder of recently shuttered online sportsbook World Sports Exchange (WSEX), died last week in Antigua of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound. The Antigua Observer reported that neighbors discovered the 60-year-old Schillinger’s body in his St. John’s apartment on Friday evening with a .38 revolver by his side. Local authorities are acting on the assumption that Schillinger chose to take his own life but have yet to rule out the possibility of foul play.
Schillinger co-founded WSEX back in 1996 with partners Jay Cohen and Hayden Ware. All three were indicted on illegal gambling charges by American federal authorities, but only Cohen chose to return to the US to plead his case in court. Cohen ended up serving nearly a year-and-a-half in prison in the early part of the last decade before returning to Antigua and resuming his WSEX role.
But faced with increased competition, WSEX never regained its former stature and had its Antiguan gaming license revoked in 2010 due to its increasingly shaky finances. Despite this, WSEX continued to operate, although customers arguably stood a better chance of playing for the NFL than collecting on an NFL wager placed through WSEX. The shortfall ultimately led to last week’s announcement that the company was “forced to halt business activities” due to a lack of cash.
