Petition filed against proprietors of Royal

Oasis for blast faxing in the United States

By LEDEDRA MARCHE

Senior FN Reporter

lededra@nasguard.com

While Royal Oasis timeshare owners move toward filing a class-action lawsuit in Florida, the resort owner is facing a class suit of another kind in the same state.

The suit was filed back in June 2005 and alleges the Royal Oasis Casino and Coral Travel and Tours Driftwood, illegally transmitted thousands of faxes to random fax machine owners in Ohio.

It is called blast faxing in the United States and the Hospitality Management of Jupiter, Florida, and its president David Buddemeyer are named as defendants.

George Melnyk, senior staff investigator for the law offices of Joseph Compoli of Cleveland, Ohio, in an interview with The Freeport News revealed that there are various plaintiffs versus Driftwood corporation, Driftwood Ltd., Driftwood Freeport, Driftwood Casinos, Royal Oasis casino and Coral Beach and Travel in the suit.

"These companies transmitted literally thousands and hundreds of thousands of fax transcimiles," he said.

"Our position is that they did this without the recipients' permission which is a violation of American law and the perpetrators of this blast faxing, as it is called, are liable for fines — civil and criminal — within the United States.

By Federal statute in the U.S., Melnyk explained, there is a $500 penalty for each fax page received.

As part of the proceedings, Melnyk says the law office has received affidavits from the principals of Driftwood Corporation of Jupiter, Florida, stating that they do not have, nor have ever had, an interest in the Royal Oasis casino.

This, Melnyk, explains, contradicts their advertising and news reports in both the Bahamian and American press and their website advertising of the Driftwood group, which, Melnyk notes, proudly proclaimed the ownership of the Royal Oasis.

According to Melnyk, the faxes were sent incessantly from 2001 and 2004.

Melnyk travelled to Grand Bahama to obtain documentation as to who did and did not have an ownership interest in the Royal Oasis here.

Buddemeyer and two others are part of the inquiry and the court proceeding in the United States.

Melnyk noted that they had received communication from a Bahamian representative in support of the defendant's contention that Driftwood of Florida have never had an interest in the Royal Oasis.

Instead, he said, they were informed that the Royal Oasis is owned by a Bahamian corporation and the implication is that it wasn't affiliated with Driftwood of Florida.

In fact, Melnyk said he made inquiries at the gaming board as to who retains ownership of the Royal Oasis gaming license, who had it during the period of roughly 2001 to 2003 and to the registry to see what entity had deed to the property of the Royal Oasis during that period.

"Whoever is responsible for faxing those faxes annoyed millions of people with competitive and ineffective faxes advertising availability of very low-cost flights to The Bahamas and stays at the Royal Oasis in a junk-mail equivalent we call blast faxing in the United States," he said.

Melnyk explained that blast faxing typically occurs when a machine dials at random anyone whose machine answers with a fax tone.

"And whether you like it or not, you're going to get this advertisement," he said. "Typically our clients received not one or two, or even a dozen advertisements from Coral Travel advertising Royal Oasis trip but dozens individually.

"So it was an incessant campaign. We believe the perpetrators hid between the competing jurisdictions of The Bahamas and the U.S."

Melnyk says at first, the origin of the faxes was difficult to determine as the return phone numbers were 800 numbers and the advertisement was through a group called Coral Beach Travel and Tours.

"Coral Beach is entirely a captive agency of the Royal Oasis and when you called the contact number you were connected directly with the Royal Oasis," he stated.

The law office of Joseph Compoli represents hundreds of clients, however, in the state of Ohio at 40 people are required for class-action status.

The Ohio law firm believes hundreds of thousands will be part of the class action and entitled for remuneration.

Melnyk says at his law office alone, there are "mountains" of Royal Oasis faxed advertisements and that only amounts to one city in the U.S.

"We have no reason to believe that millions of these things hadn't been sent out," said Melnyk.

The Royal Oasis closed in September 2004 due to Hurricane Frances.

Back then its owners reportedly owed $2.7 million to the Grand Bahama Port Authority; $2.5 million to National Insurance; $4.1 million to the Workers Pension Fund; $13 million in casino taxes; and more than $55,000 to vendors here.

Government has been trying to sell the resort property since then.

On June 7, in the House of Assembly, Prime Minister Perry Christie revealed there was a buyer but he did not disclose a name.

With news of a new buyer, timeshare owners, dozens of them, hope their contracts will be honoured but in the meantime have pooled together to file a class-action suit.

George Melnyk