Oddsmaker

FutureBet’s Reputation

Their parent company, FutureBet Systems has been running scams against gamblers since 1998. FutureBet has a large network of sites, several hundred, all facades in attempts to steal bankrolls from bettors.

Two-Way Street

Unfortunately, if it were not for the affiliates promoting and profiting off this theft, there would likely be no FutureBet/Oddsmaker.

The affiliates promoting them will give Oddsmaker an A+ review and will recommend them to new sports bettors. Of course, it is easy to pay your affiliates well, when you are stealing every dollar your customers deposit. Are these affiliates just ignorant to OddsMaker’s scam? I wish that were the case.

In mostly all cases, they are well aware. These affiliates are really the ones responsible for keeping the crooks at Oddsmaker in business. The affiliate portal used by FutureBet/Oddsmaker is www.referincome.com and if you check out their site, their program is quite lucrative.

Once again, all of this is made possible by the deliberate theft of depositing players’ funds.

Sleek but Sleazy

A visit to Oddsmaker’s site www.oddsmaker.ag, would make one think they are a large legitimate online bookmaker. Their interface, the games they offer and the overall look would suggest Oddsmaker is great for gamblers who want to be able to bet sports, play poker, and bet at a casino. Obviously, this is not the case.

They even try to entice players with a 100% sign up bonus, weekly reloads, and a 15% refer a friend bonus. Oddsmaker matches your first deposit, seemingly regardless of the amount. Seems too good to be true? Yes, it is.

Most sportsbook watch dog sites such as SportsbookReview.com have Oddsmaker listed under the F rating or note it as a scam book. A quick search on SBR, for “Oddsmaker” will uncover dozens of complaints going back to 2007. Just this past February, Oddsmaker stole 45,000 from a recreational sports bettor[1].

What was his crime, you may ask? He simply, threatened to contact an attorney after they ignored his emails and continued to hold his balance hostage. SBR took a phone call from the man, who seemed completely distraught. The man is deep in debt and his life savings are stuck in Oddsmaker, with no hope of getting it back.

Of course, attempts to contact Oddsmaker have gone unanswered and they are silent on the issue, what a shame.

Hard Numbers

Oddsmaker/Futurebet Systems is continually rebranding and looking for more players to scam.

They confiscated $200,000 from players, whose only crime according to Oddsmaker was being part of a betting syndicate. Oddsmaker spends about a million a year marketing their scam operation, which is of course funded by player deposits they receive and then never payout.

As far as a physical base of operations, Oddsmaker is an incorporated company in the Philippines. At this location, they operate their customer support center, including their live chat and phone service. They also have marketing offices out of Quebec and a server based in Canada. Oddsmaker claims they are licensed by the Government of Curacao Netherlands Antilles.

In the mid 2000s, FutureBet began licensing their “brand” for players to invest in. This resulted in a business plan, which only benefitted Futurebet and left both the licensees and customers out in the cold. FutureBet charged a licensee standard $30,000 fee for building a FutureBet website. In addition, they had royalties on all profits, 30% on sports revenue and 40% on poker. They then never paid winners, nor did they pay licensees.

Many licensees were good people, who simply just didn’t know FutureBet were just criminals. Many used their own money to pay out players when FutureBet was making up excuses. This left players and site owners at the mercy of FutureBet, who of course, ultimately never paid up.

There have been many threads over the years bringing light to this subject[2], and an ex-exployee of the company even came out and told his story in an expose of the sites business practices [3] . FutureBet, kept the money of course and to this date have not paid players. No one is completely sure how much these crooks stole from bettors since their inception. By most accounts, FutureBet has stolen at least $5 million from bettors across the world.

Continuously Rebranding

FutureBet and Oddsmaker have continuously rebranded themselves in efforts to find new groups of people to run their scams on.

They’ve tried to distance themselves from the FutureBet name and have operated under many different aliases.

The FutureBet/Oddsmaker network has over 100 sites around the web, all taking deposits but never paying out. The most notable online sportsbooks are www.oddsmaker.ag and www.betonusa.ag. They also run a Merge Network online poker room called, Felt Stars, at www.feltstars.eu.

Needless to say, these all should be avoided. For a more expansive list of over hundreds of sites, check out Casinomeister’s list of FutureBet related online sportsbooks and casinos [4] .

Final Thoughts

Oddsmaker should not even be called an online sportsbook because that gives the criminals that run the outfit way too much credit. They are simply extortionists.

Unfortunately, they are still promoted by many affiliates and until that stops they will continue to scam bettors.

As always, research each bookmaker before you deposit. Just a few minutes of searching on Google would have likely saved thousands of bettors from depositing on Oddsmaker, don’t make the same mistake.

References

[1] Oddsmaker steal $45000 from US sports bettor – Reported on the SBR forums.

[2] FutureBet Pokes Poker complaint thread – Large collection of complaints on the 2+2 forum.

[3] Former FutureBet employee speaks out – Another 2+2 thread in which an ex employee reveals more about the shady goings on at FutureBet.

[4] Full list of known FutueBet sites – Regularly updated list maintained by the guys at CasinoMeister.