Lottery.com has announced the appointment of Mark Gustavson as its new chief executive and principal executive officer with immediate effect.
Gustavson, who officially assumed responsibilities on 1 February, will also serve as principal financial and accounting officer of the business until a replacement is found.
He replaces Sohail Quraeshi, who was only appointed CEO on a full-time basis in November after being brought in on an interim basis in October.
Gustavson joins Lottery.com having last year co-founded Zenios Technologies Corporation, the company behind the Zenios Search augmented social search engine.
Prior to this, he spent eight years as lead consultant at Wookey Technologies Corporation, while he also had spells as chief financial officer at Tri Capital Energy Corporation and as acquisition integration consultant for Play Gig-It Games,
Gustavson’s other roles included co-founder and CFO of MedicuRx Corporation and also vice president for the private banking division and HSBC.
His appointment is the latest change at senior management level at Lottery.com, with the business last month having also confirmed the resignation of Edward Moffly resigned as interim CFO.
In December, Amer Rustom also stepped down as a director of the business despite having only been appointed as an outside director in October.
Turbulent year
The announcements came following a year of great change at Lottery.com. Issues began in July when its president and CFO was sacked over instances of non-compliance with state and federal laws, while the business found its cash holdings were overstated by $30m and also admitted it was not able to pay employee wages.
In an effort to improve its fortunes, Lottery.com attempted to secure funding from Woodford Eurasia, a subsidiary of United International Holdings Netherlands BV. However, the investor demanded four of the five remaining members of Lottery.com’s board resign as part of the terms of the loan.
This led to two board members quitting in protest after claiming the company deliberately “thwarted” attempts to look into “red flags” raised regarding the new investor.
In November, Richard Kivel stepped down as chairman, saying it had become “impossible” to perform as an independent director as his efforts to turn round the fortunes of the business had been “aggressively obstructed”.
Days later, Lottery.com confirmed Matthew McGahan as chairman and announced Quraeshi as CEO on a full-time basis. McGahan initially joined as an independent director of its board in October.
In December, Lottery.com was issued another warning by Nasdaq, this time because of the late filing of its third quarter results. Lottery.com was required to file its quarterly statement with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) via a Form 10-Q but said it has been unable to do so as it has not yet completed an evaluation of an ongoing review into its accounting controls.
The operator gave the same reason for not filing its second quarter results on time earlier in the year.
Source: Read Full Article