L & G Closing Nine.com Costa Rica Operation
 Gambling911 reports that Leisure and Gaming is about to shut down the Costa Rican office of subsidiary Nine.com, which is to be merged with sister company VIP Management.
 
Leisure and Gaming CEO Alistair Assheton hinted that Nine.com's overhead was too rich in a statement several weeks back, commenting that he hoped to have the issues resolved before the end of the year.

The answer appears to be to bring Nine.com into the VIP group which has offices with L&G in Curacao in the Netherlands Antilles.
 
There should be no changes to customer accounts as Nine.com is assimilated into the Curacao infrastructure.

Gamblin911 says that no impact on player accounts as group consolidates and denies that closing is related to the recent arrests in the United States by executives of other sports book operations in Costa Rica.

In mid July of this year, U.S. authorities detained David Carruthers, the chief executive of betonsports.com as he changed planes in Dallas, on his way to Costa Rica from England.

Several other arrests followed since the Carruthers arrest.

Canadian sports book magnate Calvin Ayre, owner of Costa Rica-based Bodog sportsbook, told Reuters that week,  "I think what you'll see is the public companies will stop offering services to Americans."

Although online gaming is not explicitly illegal in the United States, the U.S. Justice Department says it is barred under the U.S. Wire Wager Act.

Close to 200 companies employing thousands of people take bets over the telephone in Costa Rica, but the money involved always remains off-shore, said Eduardo Agami, head of the Costa Rican Association of Call and Electronic Data Centers.