Online sportsbooks that have used ASI include 5Dimes, BetRoyal, BetUS, BetPhoenix, Heritage Sports, JustBet and WagerWeb.
Just days after the Pinnacle Sports arrests, while the offshore sports betting industry was asking itself if it could survive whether Pinnacle lost the ability to manage professional action setting betting lines for the entire industry, a Manhattan District Attorney announced the indictment of Extension Software.
The Arizona-based software company and its proprietors, Robert Stuart, Susanne Stuart and Patrick Read, have been charged for promoting gambling and profiting from providing sportsbooks the software necessary to take bets online.
“These defendants abetted large-scale illegal gambling in the U.S. and abroad. In doing so, they gave bettors an easy way to place illegal wagers, and created an appetite for further unlawful activity,” said District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance.
Extension Software are the creators of Action Sportsbook International, known in offshore betting circles as ASI, a sportsbook software that at one time or the other powered all the major US-facing sportsbooks. According to the company’s page on Igaming Suppliers online sportsbooks that used ASI include 5Dimes, BetRoyal, BetUS, BetPhoenix, Heritage Sports, JustBet and WagerWeb.
ASI is used by offshore bookmakers in Costa Rica and the Caribbean, but according to documents filed in court, the large majority of the $2.3m in license fees deposited on Extension’s bank accounts have been paid by US-based bookmaking operations that conducted their activities in California, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Kansas, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Texas.
A law-enforcement officer was quoted by the New York Post saying “Extension software allowed the mob to move out of the back rooms of Bensonhurst and into offshore gambling and the 21st century” and that “New York’s four crime families, the Gambino, Bonanno, Lucchese and Genovese, are among the biggest users of the software.”
This explains why the investigation of a software developer, his wife working as bookkeeper and an in-law working as a sales representative, saw the Rackets Bureau joining forces with the Organized Crime Unit.
If you are based in the US and place your bets with a “local” bookmaker or offshore pay-per-head service that use ASI to power their web sites, it may be a good time to look for an alternative as the Extension Software’s indictments will likely give start to a new crackdown on local US and PPH bookmakers.
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