Death Of Warren Cloud Online Casino Operator Leaves Questions

Published on: July 13, 2008 

Warren Cloud, a South African online casino pioneer, who recently passed away after suffering a massive heart attack on his yacht, has left the online casino community with plenty of unanswered questions regarding money that is owed to creditors and what is going to happen to the rest of the online casinos he founded.  The US online casino sites that he ran have been closed down, including RealTime Gambling which Cloud was the largest online licensee.  The sites alerted their customers to remove their money from any online cash account related to these sites by July 31, 2008, or risk losing their money.  Why the sites were closed has still not been announced.

Cloud’s Silver Sands brand which includes the Silver Sands Casino is still in operation.  But it’s curious to see how long they will last without Cloud at the helm.  His business acumen was questionable to begin with and the reclusive and eccentric Cloud used several aliases during his lifetime in his business dealings.  The ten or more casinos that he was operating were bringing in millions but because of his shady start, he managed to get a bad rap by not paying players who attempted to withdraw their money.

When Cloud joined up with RealTime Gambling his online casino career got off the ground.  Even though his brand named casinos are still popular, his reputation was still marred and for quite a few years he was on and off the rogue list of consumer protection sites.  CasinoMeister, one of the largest protection sites, warned players away from Cloud’s sites for years.  According to Brian Bailey, the owner of CasinoMeister, many of Cloud’s sites were on the rogue list when he passed away.  “His [US] casinos were a frequent source of player complaints for some of its practices,” Bailey said.

Some of the complaints that are still waiting to be resolved regarding the casinos include refusal to pay out promotional bonuses to players who gambled with them and then attempted to withdraw the money when the won.  Cloud had been backing up his refusal to pay by stating that the players were abusing the bonus.  According to the rules on most online casinos, players are required to meet gambling restrictions before being able to withdraw the money.  Two of the creditors that were left hanging in the breeze include an advertising agency that is owed more than R200,000 in unpaid fees for services.  It remains to be seen whether or not any of these complaints will be resolved.

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