CAP to GPWA - CardSpike Issues

February 13, 2009 | News Category: Online Casinos

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Casino Affiliate Programs (CAP), an online forum for casino affiliates that provided online gambling information, used to be one of the most popular forums for affiliates on the Internet. After some controversy, CAP is losing members fast.

Much of the confidence in CAP's integrity was lost recently when it was discovered that there were undisclosed conflicts of interest for the owners of Cardspike Poker and Absolute Slots. Lou Fabiano, the co-founder of CAP has ties to Cardspike, who have not paid their affiliates and customers as they should have. Fabiano seemed surprised that many people saw his ownership in casinos and poker sites as a conflict with running an affiliate program.

Once members of CAP forums began posting any threads that had a connection with the Cardspike-CAP issues, they were banned by the moderators. Any criticism towards Fabiano and his partner Warren Jolly, or even mention of the dispute resulted in banning. Since then, CAP forums, formerly very busy became skeletons of their former selves.

Initially, Fabiano said the conflicts simply did not exist. After proof was offered, his next move was to say that he would be resigning his position for health reasons, but still seemed to be very much in the picture at the CAP awards soon after the announcement was made. It was then announced that Fabiano was on vacation leave, and within days, he had returned to CAP, removed the person he had left to cover his position and took back his spot in the CAP leadership.

Apart from the uncertainty of where Lou Fabiano stands in the CAP leadership, CAP has also said that they only banned Steven and Michael Corfman from their forums, and that they have since lifted the ban. However, many posters on the Gambling Portal Webmaster Association (GPWA) forums say that they too were banned for the "offense" of simply questioning the forum about what was going on.

Not only the banned CAP forum members have decided to leave. Many other members have voluntarily moved away. The number of posts and visitors on the CAP site have been drastically reduced. It seems that those who have left CAP have almost all moved over to the GPWA forums.

It is unreasonable for an organization set up in order to help arbitrate unfairness, and help their members deal with uneven business practices to expect that they can continue without a hitch after putting their own integrity in a position of doubt. Perhaps if CAP had come clean and allowed their forums to raise legitimate queries without blocking members, they might have been able to hold onto some legitimacy.

It is important that the GPWA, the Association of Players, Casinos and Webmasters (APCW), and others, ensure that their slates are clean and that their integrity does not need to be challenged in the future.