March 25, 2003

IT’S LIKE TRYING TO FIND A NEEDLE IN A HAYSTACK (LITERALLY)
By Sting, Sports911.com

Sting

(Sports911.com: March 25, 2003) Claude Levy, one of the pioneering owners of internet casinos including LasVegasCasino.com, is no stranger to controversy, and he’s not exactly someone you want to piss off either.  As the owner of Gambling Magazine and a number of other gaming “news” outets, Levy over the years has become a huge thorn in the side of some notable online casino software providers.   

A Belgium native, Levy has used his “power of the pen” to single-handedly destroy Starnet/World Gaming (not that the management there needed much assistance).  He has also used his locale as a means for dodging potential lawsuits from angry North American based companies and their investors.  

Levy’s malice towards World Gaming/Starnet came as a result of an unfortunate relationship he had while licensing their software.  During the past couple of years, the disgruntled licensee has accused World Gaming and other software providers of stealing from his business through “game rigging” and various other “fraudulent” activities.   

Claude Levy at one time held the title of “largest Starnet licensee” prior to Sportsbook.com coming on board and changing the face of online sports betting thereafter, thrusting it into the mainstream.  Levy, who apparently felt jilted by Starnet, set out to use every bit of incriminating evidence in his arsenal to discredit the one time software giant.   

After a raid on Starnet’s Vancouver office in 1999, Levy took it upon himself to search Starnet’s closet for skeletons.  Needless-to-say, there were enough bones to fill a whole apartment, and then some.   

He managed to link company officers to members of the Hell’s Angels, drugs, organized criminal activity and even child porn.  Levy’s rants soon became daily fodder for the Raging Bull stock boards, which probably helped contribute to the collapse of Starnet’s stock price.  

And what might his latest tirade be?  Levy is grasping at straws by accusing another software provider he had dealings with of financing their company through the heroine trade.  Levy delves all the way back to the year 1973 where he discovers that online casino software provider, Cryptologic, and its flagship casino, Intercasino, may have been financed by a gentleman who was once arrested for riding in a Cadillac driven by someone with ties to a heroine ring.  Talk about trying to make a mountain of a molehill!  

Of course, Levy presents plenty of court documents related to the criminal activity on his website, none of which implicates Cryptologic’s financier in any further wrongdoing.  File this under “being in the wrong place at the wrong time”!  But of course in Claude Levy’s world, finding a needle in a haystack often translates into headlines such as Intercasino and Cryptologic most probably financed with heroin dirty money!  Nevertheless, Levy’s diatribe does make for great reading every once in a while.   

By most accounts, Levy is classified as an “out of control buffoon”….but a dangerous one at that.  An excerpt from his GamblingMagazine.com website gives a not-so-subtle example of this:  

Lewis Rose from Cryptologic is in charge of the organized crime operations and Dennis Wing is chairman. When things got hot, the crooks Andrew Rivkin, Mark Rivkin, Jenny Solursh, Harvey Solursh and Jean Noelting all resigned and disappeared because they didn’t want to be around when the police will knock on the door. Now Harvey Solursh is back as director and the rotten and corrupted and crooked lawyer Robert H. Stikeman is now vice chairman. Cryptologic is fundamentally a fraudulent company with a rotten business model based on fraud, lies, cheating others, and cooking the books! These crooks can’t do business unless they cheat someone.

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