Casino Affiliate Programs and Cardspike: a contract and a high-profile resignation

In my Cardspike and Casino Affiliate Programs: player non-payment and ownership allegations which may rock the industry article of two weeks ago, I reported the allegation of an ownership connection between poker room Cardspike and Casino Affiliate Programs, online casino affiliate networking site previously subject of my CAP player database sale and database sale follow up articles.

Since then, further information has come to light and the discussions have branched off in many different directions.


Fabiano and Jolly, owners of Casino Affiliate Programs, acknowledged that, while their company Affiliate Media Inc was not connected to Cardspike, another of their operations, Effective Media Group, did have an interest.

To quote Jolly:

EMG operated as performance based consultant ONLY for an offshore investor.

The nature of the consultancy, or any further information about the "offshore investor", was never disclosed. Although this does not in itself represent an ownership / direct profit interest, clearly there is a financial interest of one kind or another, with all the potential conflicting interests that I outlined in my previous article.

Additionally, it was established that the affiliate manager of Cardspike, one Greg Powell...




...also worked for Effective Media:





Since the above Effective Media email is used for a communication from Cardspike, Effective Media would appear to be in charge of the Cardspike affiliate programme. This does not square with Warren Jolly's assertion that "EMG operated as performance based consultant ONLY for an offshore investor".


However, the issue of actual ownership, beyond simple contractual involvement, appears to have acquired quite categoric corroborartion on the basis of the publication, by Michael Corfman of the GPWA, of a Cake Poker Proposal And Key Schedule, which outlines a contract proposal on the part of Cardspike provider Cake Poker to Casino Affiliate Programs, for acquisition of a poker room on their network:





An examination of the language used in this schedule is quite revealing:

Cake Gaming...is pleased to present a proposal whereby Cake provides online poker services as outlined below to Casino Affiliate Programs.

This proposal is valid until (date deleted) and may be extended upon request.

This is clearly not a vague solicitation sent at random to an organisation which just happened to be a big online casino affiliate network. There can be little doubt that it represents the climax of a certain amount of discussion between CAP and Cake Poker, discussions centred on the acquisition, by CAP, of a Cake Poker white label operation.

The quoted passages do not use conditional language such as "...would provide" or "...will provide", but the much more definitive "...Cake provides". This is, at the very least, a proposal expected to morph into a contract after minimal additions.

Most categorically, the proposal has an expiry date, with the option to extend. As such, although it's not referred to as a contract, clearly the only thing missing is the required signatures in order to turn the proposal into a binding agreement of acquisition of rights to a Cake Poker skin on the part of Casino Affiliate Programs.


The proposal was presented on the CAP forum to Fabiano by, somewhat surprisingly, Bryan Bailey from Casinomeister, a high-profile webmaster regarded by many as honourable.

Bailey's questions were not answered, and I cannot provide a link to the discussions as they were deleted. Bailey's CAP membership was then revoked.

To cap twenty four hours of drama, within twelve hours of this taking place Lou Fabiano had apparently resigned from CAP - see the Professor signing off discussion. Exactly what he was resigning from is not clear, and the possibility remains that it could be a diversionary tactic to avoid the question raised, the clear evidence contained in the Cake Poker proposal to CAP of CAP's suspected ownership.


This whole matter has been chronicled in a series of You Tube videos from the APCW, owned by GPWA president Michael Corfman - see the reports of January 6th, January 9th, January 13th, January 16th and January 20th.


In addition to the question of Cardspike, there is also a CAP link to another CAP-certified operation, Absolute Slots, which came to light during the Cardspike discussions. This will be covered in a subsequent article, but discussion can be read on the GPWA forum in the Absolute Slots and Effective Media thread.

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