One Year After WSEX Owner Suicide Players Still Hold Out Hope to Get Paid

This weekend marked the one-year anniversary of World Sports Exchange co-founder Steve Schillinger's death by suicide.  One of the first online sportsbooks, WSEX.com owed well over a million dollars to customers at the time of Schillinger’s death.

Gambling911.com first broke the story that Schillinger, a former broker on the Pacific Exchange in San Francisco, was found in his Antigua condo with a self-inflicted gun shot to the head.

Authorities in Antigua at first did not rule out homicide.

“A lot of people are out a lot of money because of World Sports Exchange going belly up,” said Gambling911.com owner and publisher Chris Costigan in an interview with the San Francisco Examiner last year. “So a lot of people would have motive to kill Schillinger, though I don’t believe that’s what happened. But that’s why the cops have to examine every angle.”

“I think he was distraught about his company going bust and that’s why he took his own life,” Costigan added. “With the company gone, he felt he had nothing left to live for.”

Gambling911.com intrepid reporter Thomas Somach reveals that he is in communication with one player from Ohio owed nearly $40,000 from the WSEX poker room.

Sadly, the odds of finding survivors from Malaysia Flight 370 might be better than actually recouping funds from World Sports Exchange at this stage in the game.

The once coveted WSEX.com domain name now leads to a dead page.

- Jagajeet Chiba, Gambling911.com