Just to keep everyone updated with this - my impression is that the original owner of betlik planned to pay everyone, but was impossible for him to set up a working system, so he sold on the forums and provided the new buyer with $1k to pay the members.
However, it appears the second owner kept the cash and simply sold it on.
I've now purchased betlik.com and merged the forums into The Online Developer:
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Although any payment agreements were between the posters and the original owners, I'm trying to get everyone their cash back more directly by making The Online Developer a 100% revenue share forum.
Anyone who enters their Adsense publisher ID in their profile will have a chance of their own adsense code being displayed when they start a thread or reply to a thread.
At present the revenue is shared 50% between thread starter and 50% for the last poster.
Although not ideal, it should help get a lot of people their cash back if they really want to, and do so directly via Google Adsense, which should be more reliable.
Of course, new members also get to join the revenue share program if they wish.
Hopefully it should help - as before, it's not ideal - but I am keen to try and clear up the mess I've been left with and try to ensure that money can go back to the forum members.
Anyway, any questions, feel free to ask on The Online Developer forums directly.