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A man who is owed nearly $70,000 by now-defunct online sportsbook World Sports Exchange tells Gambling911.com in a world exclusive interview that he intends to sue World Sports Exchange former co-owner Jay Cohen for the owed funds.
"World Sports Exchange ruined my life," declared Mike Cribbs of Dayton, Ohio, USA. "I won $68,800 playing poker in their poker room, World Poker Exchange, and they wouldn't pay me. They kept stringing me along, saying they would be sending checks out shortly, but it never happened. Then they went out of business and I was really stuck.
"I'm unemployed right now and have a young son, so I really need the money," Cribbs, a truck driver and laborer, continued. "So as a last resort, I've decided to sue Jay Cohen, who was one of the owners, to recover the money they owe me. I have records of all my winnings and can document everything. I'm currently in the process of hiring an attorney in San Francisco, where Jay Cohen lives, so I can sue him and get back the money I rightfully earned playing poker in their online poker room and that they stole from me."
World Sports Exchange, the world's first online sportsbook, was started in 1997 in Antigua by a trio of former Pacific Exchange stock market employees from San Francisco--Jay Cohen, Steve Schillinger and Haden Ware.
World Sports Exchange used the attention-grabbing and highly-provocative web address of www.WSEX.com to take online bets on sporting events, and a few years later, opened an accompanying online poker room called World Poker Exchange.
Several years after that, when the worldwide poker boom that was ignited by Chris Moneymaker's dramatic win at the World Series of Poker subsided, World Sports Exchange pulled the plug on World Poker Exchange but continued to book sports bets.
Several years after that, in 2013, World Sports Exchange pulled the plug on itself and went out of business for good, stiffing hundreds, maybe thousands, of poker players and sports bettors out of millions of dollars in owed funds.
To compound the disaster, just days after World Sports Exchange went belly up, Schillinger was found dead in his Antigua home from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head, a suicide note by his side.
Since Schillinger's death, Gambling911.com has heard from dozens of former WSEX and WPEX customers who tried and failed to collect winnings and now are in a collective stew, with WSEX now out of business and one of the owners now dead.
"I'm really surprised how this all turned out," Cribbs told Gambling911.com. "I played at WPEX for about five years and had always been paid in a timely fashion. Then the bottom fell out."
Cribbs said he won a total of about $130,000 playing at WPEX over a five-year period and received about 25 checks from them during that time frame, with each check between $2,000 and $3,000.
"They paid me about $60,000 of what they owe me but then they just stopped paying," Cribbs recalled. "They never said we're not going to pay you any more, they just sort of stalled me and stalled me, giving plenty of excuses. One day they'd tell me they were having payment processor problems, and then the next time they'd tell me there were issues with their bank. It was one excuse after another. But the bottom line is they still owe me exactly $68,800 and I want it."
Cohen moved back to San Francisco after the demise of WSEX.
An article several years ago in The New York Times about architecture revealed Ware and his German wife were living in a $1.5-million luxury home that's a converted brewery in Berlin, Germany, but mentioned nothing about his connections to WSEX.
Schillinger's death was officially ruled a suicide by Antiguan authorities
"Ware is living in a $1.5-million converted brewery and I can't get a lousy $70,000 they owe me," griped Cribbs. "He's in Germany so I can't get to him, at least not easily. And Schillinger's dead. But Jay Cohen is still around and still in the U.S., so I'm going after him. I'm going to sue him not just for what WSEX owes me, but for interest on the money for all these years, plus whatever my attorney's fees will be."
Cribbs said he is currently in the process of selecting an attorney and hopes to initiate legal action as soon as possible. He's looking at Bay Area attorneys but said if he can find a good lawyer specializing in gambling issues from elsewhere in the country, he would consider that too.
"I've waited long enough to get my money," he said. "Jay Cohen is a crook and he is not going to get away with this."
Gambling911.com will keep you updated on the progress of the lawsuit.
By Tom Somach
Gambling911.com Staff Writer
