FairCasinos
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 Posted: Sat Sep 11, 2004 6:25 am Post subject: |
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I was researching another possibly related casino (www.bets.cc which has now closed) and found this article about the cybersportsbook.com group:
| Quote: | Entrepreneur seeks Web gambling jackpot
Ron Tarter's Casino Affiliate Network lets site operator add ecasinos
to Internet offerings
JOHN PARTRIDGE
The Globe and Mail
Monday, August 28, 2000
Last Thursday, Ron Tarter put $50 on a horse named Just Got Lucky in
the fifth race at Toronto's Woodbine racetrack.
But the name didn't pay off. Just Got Lucky, which he had bet to win,
placed third.
Mr. Tarter, 24, a business-school dropout who grew up in the Toronto
suburb of Thornhill, is hoping for better luck with a much more
ambitious wager he made last year. In fact, he is hoping to strike it rich
in the controversial but booming international business of on-line
gambling -- worth an estimated $1-billion (U.S.) to $2-billion a year at
present -- through his Antigua-based Casino Affiliate Network (CAN).
Mr. Tarter abandoned his pursuit of an MBA at Toronto's York
University last year, and with his parents as the two other shareholders
launched his venture through a holding company called Sinsational
Entertainment Inc., which is also registered in the gambling-friendly
Caribbean island.
CAN's main Web site is cybersportsbook.com, but rather
than being satisfied with running a few casino sites himself, Mr. Tarter
instead decided that the real future lies in distribution.
He has concentrated on signing up Web site operators, or Webmasters,
around the world, giving them the opportunity to add customized casinos
with sports betting and games to their existing offerings.
They get to ride on the coattails of gambling software he licenses from
Starnet Communications International Inc. and a gambling licence for
which CAN is paying the Antiguan government $100,000 a year.
The operators pay nothing to join and keep 25 per cent of the losses
incurred by any punter they sign up, no matter which CAN-affiliated site
the gambler plays at. The betting is tracked by CAN, whose 15
employees handle all the accounting and other administrative functions
for the network.
Mr. Tarter said he has recruited a startling 5,000 Webmasters since CAN
went on-line 14 months ago and that there are now about 1,000 affiliate
sites up and running. They, in turn, have signed up more than 100,000
on-line gamblers.
He thinks his business will get a whole lot bigger. "The potential is
unlimited," he said from Thornhill during a week's vacation away from
Antigua, where he now has resident status. "Any given affiliate can put
up as many sites as they wish, so the number is exponential. There could
be hundreds of thousands of sites."
Mr. Tarter wouldn't reveal how much it cost to get CAN off the ground,
beyond saying that it would be "pretty hopeless" if anyone tried to
emulate him with less than $1-million to play with.
He did say, however, that he financed the business with some help from
his father and with gains he made selling stock in Starnet -- formerly
based in Vancouver but now in Antigua -- that he bought with a bank
loan while working part-time at investment dealer ScotiaMcLeod Inc.
He's cagey about CAN's financial results, too, saying only that its
monthly revenue hasn't yet topped $1-million but that it is already
profitable.
Mr. Tarter has made believers of some of the Webmasters who have
signed on.
"It has worked out great for me," said Jeff Broughton, a freelance
computer programmer who launched his affiliate site,
http://www.playtheodds.com , in January.
Mr. Broughton, 27, a Canadian expatriate, is moving to Antigua from his
current base in Holland. With minimal expense and effort, he said, he has
watched as his profit hit $2,000 a month in March and $5,000 in June. "I
hope to break the $10,000 mark in September," he added.
It's no secret why Mr. Tarter has based his business in Antigua and
established residency there. It is illegal to operate an on-line gambling
site in Canada and the United States; as a result, many industry players
are located in countries such as Antigua and Costa Rica that actively
court dot-com casinos.
Some on-line gambling concerns have attracted unwelcome attention
from North American authorities. Starnet, where Mr. Tarter worked
briefly as a marketer in Vancouver in 1998, became the target of a police
investigation last year for allegedly distributing illegal pornography on
the Internet, although it subsequently sold its "adult entertainment"
business.
As well, in the first case of its kind, a U.S. judge two weeks ago
sentenced Jay Cohen of San Francisco to 21 months in prison and fined
him $5,000 for illegally operating an offshore Internet gambling
business, Antigua-based World Sports Exchange.
Apparently anxious to avoid creating problems for his family or himself
should he return home down the road, Mr. Tarter has taken other steps to
minimize his business's connections with Canada. "We block all
Canadian credit cards and deactivate any Canadian accounts."
The precautions do not surprise Ian Kerr. Now an associate professor of
law at the University of Ottawa, he taught Mr. Tarter at the University of
Western Ontario in London, where the Internet entrepreneur graduated
top of his class in 1998 with a BA in media information and
technoculture.
"He views on-line gambling . . . not as a criminal activity, but the kind of
thing where the law has just fallen behind in terms of what kind of
regulatory approaches are appropriate," Prof. Kerr said.
Similarly, his drive comes as no surprise to stockbroker Rob Saltsman,
Mr. Tarter's boss while he worked part-time at ScotiaMcLeod during
high school and university.
"He's the type of guy that when he gets something going, I'd bet with
him," said Mr. Saltsman, who is now an investment dealer at Goepel
McDermid Inc. in Toronto.
Mr. Tarter's talents weren't so obvious to begin with. He was bored with
high school and was failing some of his classes.
But he fell in love with the financial business, where he ultimately
graduated from gopher work to helping develop sales leads. "Here's a
guy who was a bum and burned out, and all he had to do was find
something he liked and he was a brand new guy," Mr. Saltsman said.
As it happens, CAN isn't Mr. Tarter's first gambling venture. He said he
developed a taste for gambling in high school, and about six years ago,
having made "a few thousand bucks" wagering through some offshore
sports books, he and a friend took out a student loan and started selling a
system for betting.
"But unfortunately, that was the year all the sports leagues went on
strike," he recalled, "so it pretty much demolished us."
Assuming CAN manages to avoid demolition, Mr. Tarter said he hopes
to cash out down the road either by going public or by selling out to one
of the major bricks-and-mortar casino operators that he predicted will
eventually push their way into the on-line arena. |
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