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More than six years after he was found shot to death in his luxury home in Sweden, the murder of 36-year-old Andreas Oscarsson, owner and founder of PokerListings.com, remains an Unsolved Mystery of Gambling.
There have been reports and/or rumors that it was a "hit" or contract killing, that the Hells Angels motorcycle gang was involved, that a bitter ex-wife was behind it, that Oscarrson was being extorted by someone and even that Oscarrson owed money to a revenge-seeking billionaire's family.
But regardless of whether it was any of those or something wilder, police in Sweden still haven't been able to make much progress in solving the crime and it looks like they never will.
PokerListings.com was started in 2003--the year Tennessee accountant Chris Moneymaker parlayed a $39 entry in an online tournament into a win at the World Series of Poker and ignited a worldwide poker boom--and featured news and information about the game of poker.
The website didn't take long to become profitable and attract investors.
It is still in operation today and has expanded to also include content about sports betting.
One of the early investors in the site its first year was a fellow Swede, Stefan Bengtsson, who is the nephew of Stefan Persson, a billionaire businessman listed as the 18th-richest person in the world.
According to some media reports at the time of the murder, Oscarsson was being pursued by an unidentified man who sent Thomas Moller, the former president of the Swedish Hells Angels, to collect $2 million on behalf of a company owned by Bengtsson.
Moller claimed he was contacted to collect the $2 million, which was related to Bengtsson’s $250,000 investment in PokerListings.com in 2003, because Bengtsson was expecting to receive $7 million for his investment and only received $5 million for his shares, following the introduction of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act, a Federal law that hampered online gamblers' abilties to fund online poker.
None of this was ever proven, however, and authorities in Sweden have never arrested anyone in connection with the murder.
All that is known is that on the night of August 3, 2009, someone entered Oscarsson's house through an open bedroom window and shot the poker media mogul in the head six times with a handgun, almost certainly killing him instantly.
Oscarsson, who was recently divorced and involved in an ongoing custody battle, also had his son and his father in the residence at the time, in other rooms, and they were unhurt.
The murderer got away, few clues were left at the scene of the crime and Swedish authorities will say today that the investigation is continuing, which means they've gotten nowhere but won't close the probe on the hopes that someday someone will reveal something.
After six years, that's unlikely.
And that's why the murder of Andreas Oscarsson is, and likely will remain, an Unsolved Mystery of Gambling.
By Tom Somach
Gambling 911 Staff Writer
tomsomach@yahoo.com
