Player "clubfooted" - Contact us for your money back

[ssaCEO]

This is a public announcement to player "clubfooted" - we cannot take your bets. All of your bets have been reversed and your account has been frozen. This was done within 1 hour of your play. We have not had a response yet from your email address.

We do not want your money on our books.

Contact security@strikesapphire.com immediately with a Bitcoin address where we can return your deposit.

[DeathAndTaxes]

Wait you reverse bets?

[ssaCEO]

We believe the play took place illegally, we believe from America, in violation of our TOS. The guy was using a VPN that slipped through our system and was only caught on our manual check. We reverse both wins and losses in cases where we believe an American has played.

ed: FWIW, the guy lost and we're refunding his money.

[DeathAndTaxes]

Thank you for the clarification.  Sounds reasonable since play from US is in violation of your terms. 

[fcmatt]

We believe the play took place illegally, we believe from America, in violation of our TOS. The guy was using a VPN that slipped through our system and was only caught on our manual check. We reverse both wins and losses in cases where we believe an American has played.

I am unclear how you could catch a vpn in every case? Seems impossible unless the user makes some simple mistake?
Hmm. Naturally you will not give out trade secrets but as an it person i admit i am confused.

[ssaCEO]

We believe the play took place illegally, we believe from America, in violation of our TOS. The guy was using a VPN that slipped through our system and was only caught on our manual check. We reverse both wins and losses in cases where we believe an American has played.

I am unclear how you could catch a vpn in every case? Seems impossible unless the user makes some simple mistake?
Hmm. Naturally you will not give out trade secrets but as an it person i admit i am confused.

We're not magicians, but we make every effort to identify them. Most legal casinos rely on two things to comply with US restrictions: simple IP blocks, plus the fact that payment processors won't accept US funds. With Bitcoin, we can't rely on the latter. We subscribe to two services that track known VPNs, hosting blocks and TOR exit nodes; in this case the user entered through a server that was not on either list. At that point we have three other internal checks we perform. The point here is not to stop all VPNs, it's to make every good-faith effort to not take American players, so that, e.g., a guy in the IRS office in Kansas City can't gamble on our site without breaking several federal and international laws, violating our TOS and entrapping us in order to do so. The point is to make it totally clear that we don't want Americans playing and to make it as difficult as possible.

[TTBit]

None of my business, but I don't think posting on a forum is in the best interest of your site. Skeptical types will be wondering if you are setting up to reverse wagers down the line for winners, all the time stating "we did it for the players that lost too, see post #....". The wagers were made, refunding does not undo them.

[ssaCEO]

None of my business, but I don't think posting on a forum is in the best interest of your site. Skeptical types will be wondering if you are setting up to reverse wagers down the line for winners, all the time stating "we did it for the players that lost too, see post #....". The wagers were made, refunding does not undo them.

The reason for this post is that we believe the person in question was actively trying to entrap us, and is intentionally ignoring our email asking for a Bitcoin address to return their money to. Therefore it's important to state, in a public forum, that we will reverse wagers made from the US, and that we are not claiming this person's money.

We have reversed one set of wagers before, to an American. We have never, and will never, reverse wagers in any other case. If there is some other gross violation of our TOS we would do so, but it would need to be something egregious, and it hasn't happened in the 15 months we've been open. We're the longest-standing Bitcoin casino and we have a reputation to defend; we pay fast and we never screw around with our players' money. We keep at least 5x our players' total standing funds on tap at all times to pay out jackpots. So - this is not a setup to some other punch - it's covering our legal ass.

[FreeMoney]

I understand the thinking, but don't you open yourself up to an attack like this?

Attacker owns a machine out of us with completely normal foreign IP, connects via remote desktop or similar from US, reveals or proves in some way that they are in the US, but only if they lose.

[ssaCEO]

I understand the thinking, but don't you open yourself up to an attack like this?

Attacker owns a machine out of us with completely normal foreign IP, connects via remote desktop or similar from US, reveals or proves in some way that they are in the US, but only if they lose.

I don't want to get into the exact nature of our decisions on this - I'll say that we draw a red line at VPNs. We are not going to send back someone's losses (or cancel their winnings) just because they're a US citizen, if their play came from some residential broadband network in Europe. In general, if people are using a home computer on a regular network to access our site, then we consider that bet to be coming from the country the connection originates in. We believe that if you own a piece of equipment in another country that you're using to bet, then you are forwarding the bets yourself -- i.e. acting as your own casino and broadcasting an illegal service into the US. If a guy mails himself pot from Amsterdam, that doesn't mean that the coffeehouse where he bought it has broken any laws. He's the one breaking the law. That logic is totally valid for VPNs, too...but renting a server for a few bucks a month is one less major level of difficulty for the average gambler than buying a condo in the UK with an internet connection, and so we feel it's worth trying to stop it. The reason is that the laws aren't always applied logically; Bitcoin and gambling both have plenty of heat, and the quarter- or half-million we could be making a year in the US ain't worth it. As far as the IRS is concerned, if they're trying to tweak us by having some guy deposit and lose a few bucks, they're going to have to jump through so many hoops that no reasonable jury would consider us as having had any intent to take bets from US players, and that's the bottom line. Your specific scenario's a tough call, and we'd deal with things like that on a case-by-case basis. Our lawyers have told us we're within our rights to just freeze a player's funds for violating our TOS and leave it at that, and that would by my gut reaction if someone tried to pull that kind of shit on us. So far, it's been our policy to pay back these deposits out of an abundance of caution.

In this case this was IMO clearly a setup by a gov't agency, and we are trying to return the bettors money in good faith. So to repeat:

Bettor, come claim your deposit back. It will be waiting for you until the end of time, because we do not want your money.

[FreeMoney]

That makes sense.

I'd be interested to know why you think it is government, but feel free not to share.

[dooglus]

That makes sense.

I'd be interested to know why you think it is government, but feel free not to share.

I've seen some pretty wild accusations from Strike Sapphire people before; my girlfriend was accused of not existing, even though she had previously engaged in a Skype audio call with the management and I've seen a player accused of being US law enforcement for no apparent reason.

Evidence doesn't seem to matter; accuse first, think later seems to be the policy.  I think maybe alcohol plays a part in the problem, but can't be sure.

[squid]

Out of curiosity, what sort of authority does the US have on a non-US based bitcoin casino? Even if you try to prevent US gamblers some will always get through somehow. Is my government really that hellbent on targeting casinos outside of its jurisdiction?

[payb.tc]

Is my government really that hellbent on targeting casinos outside of its jurisdiction?

newsflash: your government is hellbent on targeting everything outside of it's jurisdiction.

[squid]

I understand that, I just don't understand the motivation. I haven't really followed the online gambling shenanigans. Is it more of US casinos worried about profits and lobbying to prevent any US gamblers from spending their money anywhere else other than US institutions or something else?