The territory's Ombudsman has told punters – who lost $3.8 million in the collapse - that their complaints against the ACT Gambling and Racing Commission (GRC) over its dealings with the bankrupt bookie will not be pursued.

The Ombudsman's office has found that directors of the defunct gambling house misled authorities about its true financial position.

Some customers are furious, branding the Ombudsman a “toothless tiger” and demanding to know why it took 20 months to reach the finding.

But the GRC says it is not surprised by the result and that it was always confident its conduct would be vindicated.

Sports Alive collapsed in 2009, with debts of more than $14 million including $3.8 million to 18,000 betting customers and a Victorian Supreme Court decision in March virtually ensured they would get none of their money back by putting the punters behind secured creditors for refunds of monies owed.

The collapse is now being investigated by fraud squad detectives in Melbourne, where the betting agency conducted most of its business, and by corporate watchdog the Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC).

A group of angry gamblers have been waiting since 2011 for the Ombudsman to investigate their claims that slack oversight of the bookies by the GRC was a key factor in their money being lost.

But a senior investigation officer has written to the complainants, telling them there would be no further action from her organisation.

“The commission relied on information supplied by Sports Alive over a number of years and was assured by that information,” she wrote.

“The assurance provided to the commission was later found to be unreliable.

“The action taken by the Commission by Sports Alive was reasonable under the circumstances.

“The commission has reviewed what happened in this case and taken a number of steps to improve its regulation of sports bookmakers.”

GRC chief executive Greg Jones said he was “not at all” surprised by the Ombudsman's findings.

“The Commission has held all along that the information provided by Sports Alive was deliberately false and misleading,” Mr Jones said.

“Having discovered that, post liquidation, we provided information to the Victorian Police on the potential fraud as well as information to ASIC.”

But account holder Dennis Tuan-Mu, who has led the punters' protests since Sports Alive's collapse, was scathing of the efforts of the Ombudsman in the wake of the decision.

“This matter then set on the backburner for months with no notification to accountholders and was hand-passed around until it went to a part-time officer,” Mr Tuan-Mu said.

“The final reasons provided by the Ombudsman are brief, generic and provide no basis for how they reached their ultimate outcome.

“They took the easy way out and simply blamed the Sports Alive directors for misleading the ACT GRC.

“However, they failed to comment on how the ACT GRC didn't even perform basic and rudimentary checks of Sports Alive's multiple breaches at any time over eight years, any one of which would have alerted them to problems."

A spokeswoman for the Ombudsman said the complaint could not be finalised until after the Victorian Supreme Court handed down its judgment.