Last sighs of online gambling leader

BodogLife.com (formerly Bodog.com), the online gambling and poker site is facing serious problems threatening its existence. Last month the U.S. Government seized $24 million from bank accounts linked to Bodog. But unlike other gambling companies with monies tied to Zip Payments - the subject of a U.S. attorney's office out of Baltimore – Bofog failed to set up new processing means.

In the course of investigation the authorities discovered an elaborate international structure put together to allow Bodog to collect money and write checks to winning gamblers in the U.S. $248 million involving entities linked to Bodog was processed through Wachovia Bank, from which $11 million of the $24 million was seized.

The U.S. Internal Revenue Service's Criminal Investigation Division started looking at Bodog in 2003 and opened a formal probe in 2006. That was around the same time the government began severely hunting for high profile online gambling companies the likes of BetonSports and Neteller, another payment solutions business that deals exclusively in online gambling.

At the beginning Bodog was advertised mostly via the Gambling911.com website as the "future of online gambling". Over a couple of years Bodog became extremely popular and reached the climax of its success in 2006.

Relationships between the Gambling911 website and Bodog have long been strained. In 2006 Bodog purchased BetCorp at the time G911's largest sponsor but did nothing with the brand, which resulted in drastically cut revenues for Gambling911. Costigan has also been highly critical of brash and - some would say - reckless behavior of Bodog’s founder Calvin Ayre.

Last weekend Gambling911.com made a decision to break all ties with Bodog following similar steps made by sports betting's largest news portal, Covers.com.

The casino and poker products o the company can sustain Bodog for a short term but experts say that increasing losses and inability to convert a large enough number of new customers as a consequence of processing issues will inevitably lead the business to failure.