.net and jquery all of a sudden giving me 401 err

here was my ajax call:

$J.ajax({
    type: 'POST',
    url: "/ajax/getCharts",
    data: JSON.stringify(cids),
    dataType: 'json',
    asynch: false
})

this worked ... until yesterday
we are using Microsoft.AspNet.Identity;
and yesterday I added in more user roles expanding upon the defaults such as "admin", "user" etc.

Now I am getting this err back in my ajax.fail header:

X-Responded-JSON: {"status":401,"headers":{"location":"http://localhost:56970/Account/Login?ReturnUrl=%2Fajax%2FgetCharts"}}

which kind of makes sense - if the call is failing authentication
note:
in my ajaxController I had previously annotated it as such (which worked):

[Authorize(Roles = "User")]
public class ajaxController : BaseController

and now I expanded it include my new custom user roles such that:

[Authorize(Roles = "Superuser, Poweruser, User")]
public class ajaxController : BaseController

and that didnt work
also i added this in RegisterRoutes:

        var settings = new FriendlyUrlSettings();
        settings.AutoRedirectMode = RedirectMode.Off;
        routes.EnableFriendlyUrls(settings);

as suggested by:
ASP.NET Calling WebMethod with jQuery AJAX "401 (Unauthorized)"

but it didnt work

and this page made no sense to me:
jquery $.ajax call results in 401 unauthorized response when in Chrome or Firefox, but works in IE

what am i missing here?