Purple Lounge debacle back in the spotlight

The Purple Lounge debacle has raised its head again, this time customers who allege they are owed “millions of pounds” and were the victims of regulatory failings have begun a fund raising initiative on crowdfunding platform crowdjustice.com to fund a class suit against the former directors and owners of Purple Lounge parent company, Media Corporation Plc.

Our readers will recall, the UK-based, publicly-traded online gaming company’s online poker and casino operation went black without warning in April 2012.

At the time players reported slow cash outs in the months running up to the shutdown and a formal warning was published by respected player advocacy site CasinoMeister who removed Purple Lounge from its accredited list.

Following the site going offline, players were frustrated with little or no communication from the company with the exception of a discouraging financial statement which was eventually published.

Player funds, which were supposed to have been ring-fenced, had disappeared and thousands of customers were left short-changed.

Purple Lounge operated for eight years and had 120,000 registered customers at shut-down. It was licensed by the Malta Gambling Authority(formerly the LGA).

One of the people behind the crowdfunding drive claims to be a “formal substantial shareholder in Media Corporation Plc. who for some time had direct and regular personal access to a number of the previous Media Corporation Plc. directors.”

This former shareholder claims to have a unique insight into events overall supported by “substantial amounts of tangible and compelling evidence which has been provided by and gathered from multiple sources over an extended period of time.”

The group intends issuing proceedings in the London High Court against the parties they allege are directly responsible, naming former Media Corporation Plc directors in the background to their crowd funding initiative.

The group draws parallels between the demise of Purple Lounge and UK Gambling Commission-licensed GameTech, who recently surrendered its UK license and was placed in Administration. While it doesn’t claim wrong-doing in the GameTech case, it does point out that the two entities share a common director and major shareholder.

The full crowdfunding initiative can be accessed here: https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/defrauded-purple-lounge-registered-customers/ and the group’s published detail on the background and case can be read here: https://fraudatmdcpl.wordpress.com