Online firms deny charges

Thursday, Oct. 17, 2002 | 11:26 a.m.

Two online sports monitoring and handicapping entities that were sued by Global Sports Edge Inc., formerly known as Sports Entertainment Inc., denied accusations they stole and sold the handicapped services and selections of Global's sports handicappers.

Consensus USA and Offshorebettor.com were two of 16 online sports monitoring and handicapping entities named in Global's U.S. District Court suit in Las Vegas. The defendants were accused of improperly appropriating proprietary information that Global sells to its subscribers.

Michael Moberg, owner of Consensus USA of Boston, disputed the allegations.

"One of (Global Sports' founder) Wayne Root's subscribers traded his plays for information that Consensus USA had from its sources," Moberg said. "If Wayne Root had contacted me, we would have stopped putting his plays on our website. But he never did contact me once. Half the time I don't even put his plays out on our website."

Reno Matthews, owner of Offshorebettor.com of New Jersey, also denied the accusations.

"We are a handicapping tool and a posting forum with links to sports gambling sites. We're targeted because we're the largest forum with over 100,000 users per month and the site is free. I don't sell any information from the site," he said. "Root claims the names of the sports teams are copyrighted information. But it isn't. You can't copyright the names of sports teams."