The trick I used to bail my money out of abusive casinos

[Darker45]

I'm a bit surprised this is also how things work in more developed countries. You'd have to make small threats in order to be taken seriously.

But if they're only responding to your request because of such threat, I don't think it'll work on casinos based in Curaçao and Anjouan. Their response is based on fear, fear that their license obtained directly from the country they're operating might be put in jeopardy. They're basically just afraid their behavior might get their license revoked, if found out similar reports against them are piling up.

In the case of casinos registered in Curaçao and Anjouan, I don't think there's too much risk involved. Other than the fact that regulators aren't strict, if worst comes to worst they have the option to just dissolve their casino and start another one.

[Barcode_]

Last year I did a run on my country's licensed casinos, creating accounts and trying out their bonus schemes just to test the waters and see if any one of them has a good platform to migrate some of my betting activity there.

Many of these platforms are literally giving away free money just for signing up. You get free bets of 20 EUR in some of them. Although the requirements to be able to withdraw this money is sometimes ridiculous, other times it is very relaxed and I did in fact ended up winning hundreds of Euros from 0 deposits and bonuses that were anywhere from 5 EUR to 20 EUR per casino.

If these type of casinos are not even going to honor their giveaway promotions and the casinos are always trying to find tons of excuses or purposely delaying a player withdrawal using KYC verification as an excuse even after the customer had provided all the necessary documents to complete the KYC verification process, I think it is not truly advisable for gamblers to continue playing in these of casinos anymore.

If the casinos are not even willing to process a customer withdrawal after the customers had completed the wagering requirements for the free bonuses, I felt that these casinos are highly likely to keep on delaying the withdrawal of any players who are lucky enough to win huge amount of money in their games.

Even after months of pointless back and forth, such a message would make most gambling sites simply comply to the request and let me withdraw my balance. They suddenly stopped caring about rollover requirements even and were just letting me withdraw my full deposit and winnings. To be fair, I had completed the rollover requirements on the won balance before requesting a withdrawal. But got the occasions I had deposited a small amount, they'd lock my full withdrawable balance claiming I must do a full rollover of the balance again at least 1x as part of an AML rule they invented...

The casino actually does not have the legal rights to withhold your money since you have completed their rollover requirements according to their giveaways promotions.

[danherbias07]

I didn't know there was such a trick to make those greedy gambling sites pay for their BS answers and their AI-generated crappy emails.

Anyway, that's a lesson learned for me. I guess I will just have to find where I can CC the email so that they will be forced to make me withdraw my funds if they keep asking for more KYC documents.
They always try to prolong the issues because they want the gamblers to be forced to just gamble the money that they have in their accounts while waiting for the answers from customer support. Obviously, it's a delaying tactic where they will always have the upper hand because they know gamblers are impatient when it comes to waiting for answers.

[Harkorede]

~snip

I think one of the most common tricks they could use to hold down your money is either KYC related or rule breach. Sometimes they can get rid of the whole ticket when they have KYC on you and that includes your IBAN. So in the nutshell you were also actually lucky mostly because you probably never broke a rule or exploited a loop hole.

If a casino doesn't want to pay out your money there's barely anything you can do unless you want to take legal actions and most times it's just futile because many of them are not even properly registered.

Except you violated their TOS or rules, in countries where gambling is heavily regulated involving the regulators is something no local casino would ever want, regulators sniffing around is always bad for business, and means trouble is lurking. And if it's there is no significant amount involved, it's never going to be worth the trouble for them. Moreso, not being properly registered would be another reason why they'd pay up, or their days of being operational might be numbered.

[Danish Ali]

Now what I wonder is, how did you feel comfortable sharing your KYC data with obviously very shady casinos? You haven't mentioned names here, but I doubt it has been any of the big and trusted names that are also present on the forum?

It's not really a "trick", it was a decision made up front to use casinos shady enough to require a threat from a regulator in the first place. If you simply omit casinos that would risk their reputation for a €20-100 bonus then the issue isn't present at all. In this case prevention is better than extraction.

If they do sports or spot betting of a kind comparable with another casino, you could arbitrage a virtual withdrawal by placing bets on the same game but opposing outcomes at either casino.

I would consider paying the house edge twice just to move money out only to be a valid strategy if the casino is stalling to such a degree that losing the vig is less expensive than being stuck there. As an emergency tactic for those who are already stuck, sure, but it's hardly something anyone should rely on as a contingency strategy.

[SPIDERMAN008]

I didn't know there was such a trick to make those greedy gambling sites pay for their BS answers and their AI-generated crappy emails.

Anyway, that's a lesson learned for me. I guess I will just have to find where I can CC the email so that they will be forced to make me withdraw my funds if they keep asking for more KYC documents.
They always try to prolong the issues because they want the gamblers to be forced to just gamble the money that they have in their accounts while waiting for the answers from customer support. Obviously, it's a delaying tactic where they will always have the upper hand because they know gamblers are impatient when it comes to waiting for answers.

You are right. No casino site would want someone to bet with the bonus money and get out of it freely with a lot of profit. For this reason they keep delaying withdrawals using various excuses. Another thing is that the reason they were marketing with bonuses is to attract users. But if they do such fraudulent activity or do not allow profit withdrawals with false excuses, they will lose more users. This will also start to cause problems with their reputation.

Yes you are right, if they delay responding, then a gambler may naturally want to bet again after seeing the balance in the account. Then if he loses and the balance becomes empty , then he will have nothing to withdraw. At that time, someone from the casino site customer care will contact him. So I think it is foolish to waste time betting on such a casino site. I rather try to avoid such unusual bonuses.

[ArabBTC]

You are right. No casino site would want someone to bet with the bonus money and get out of it freely with a lot of profit. For this reason they keep delaying withdrawals using various excuses. Another thing is that the reason they were marketing with bonuses is to attract users. But if they do such fraudulent activity or do not allow profit withdrawals with false excuses, they will lose more users. This will also start to cause problems with their reputation.

Yes you are right, if they delay responding, then a gambler may naturally want to bet again after seeing the balance in the account. Then if he loses and the balance becomes empty , then he will have nothing to withdraw. At that time, someone from the casino site customer care will contact him. So I think it is foolish to waste time betting on such a casino site. I rather try to avoid such unusual bonuses.

It is because of such selfish reason that most casinos don’t last in business for long, how can they be delaying a bettors withdrawal simply because they want him to become impatient and reuse his winning to make another bet that would probably cut, if the bettor loses such bet he will be very angry with the casino and won’t mind giving the casino a bad review. Casino’s too has to learn to allow bettors win at times, like me if i bet repeatedly using a particular casino and i discover that i always lose anytime i use that casino i will immediately withdraw all my deposits and start using a different casino, some casino gives their customers bad luck because of their mode of operation, casino’s are fond of using this delayed withdrawal tactics and it is really not nice at all.

[Don Pedro Dinero]

You are right. No casino site would want someone to bet with the bonus money and get out of it freely with a lot of profit. For this reason they keep delaying withdrawals using various excuses. Another thing is that the reason they were marketing with bonuses is to attract users. But if they do such fraudulent activity or do not allow profit withdrawals with false excuses, they will lose more users. This will also start to cause problems with their reputation.

It is not so much a question of reputation as it is of the regulator. The OP cites the example of a European country with strict regulation – Greece – like most EU countries. Casinos have to obtain a specific licence from the country in order to operate there, pay for the licence – which is not usually cheap – and comply with regulations that are much stricter than those in Caribbean countries. In such cases, they might play a bit of a game to avoid paying the 20 or 100 euros, but if the customer gets serious, they’ll pay up straight away, as they risk a much larger fine from the regulator if they fail to comply.

[Africolo]

Last year I did a run on my country's licensed casinos, creating accounts and trying out their bonus schemes just to test the waters and see if any one of them has a good platform to migrate some of my betting activity there.

Many of these platforms are literally giving away free money just for signing up. You get free bets of 20 EUR in some of them. Although the requirements to be able to withdraw this money is sometimes ridiculous, other times it is very relaxed and I did in fact ended up winning hundreds of Euros from 0 deposits and bonuses that were anywhere from 5 EUR to 20 EUR per casino.

The lesson leaned from there was that the vast majority of casinos, even the ones registered legally and directly with authorities of the country they want to attract players from with full KYC, will always try some very nasty tricks to make their players lose their winnings.

Some casinos delayed my KYC verification for two months! Even though I was careful to complete KYC before betting anything! They saw I won any amount that I would have been eligible to withdraw normally and just disabled my KYC and kept finding shit excuses to not let me withdraw immediately like saying I can only withdraw with a bank for my first withdrawal, or that I even need an attested copy to a personal bank record booklet in my name... Who the hell has physical bank records these days!? I haven't received any paper from my bank for over 10 years personally.

After a lot of back and forth all casinos accepted my otherwise perfectly good documents, but still at the end they were slacking with their responses. They would refuse to service me via live chat and took up to two weeks per email response.

Of course by this point I know most gamblers would have ran their balance to zero. Casinos know this. This is the purpose of support being slow to profitable players even though they have a live chat... And they were doing this to me over 20 or at most 100 EUR. Imagine what they'd do for thousands of you got exceptionally lucky.

After a certain point I got so fed up at casinos doing this I decided I had enough.
I could have let my account there exist to keep receiving some of their offers that are essentially just free money, like free bets, but I decided to try the "final solution"...

Basically, in order to get my funds out asap, I'd just send a message like this:

"I would like to utilise my right to close my account.
You are to proceed with a withdrawal of my full balance to my IBAN immediately.

I will not participate in any promotional actions such as rollover requirements as this would go against your rules to prevent addiction.
Please just message me to confirm of my account closure and the withdrawal of my balance.

This email is CC'd to our country's regulator for future reference."

Even after months of pointless back and forth, such a message would make most gambling sites simply comply to the request and let me withdraw my balance. They suddenly stopped caring about rollover requirements even and were just letting me withdraw my full deposit and winnings. To be fair, I had completed the rollover requirements on the won balance before requesting a withdrawal. But got the occasions I had deposited a small amount, they'd lock my full withdrawable balance claiming I must do a full rollover of the balance again at least 1x as part of an AML rule they invented...

TL;DR: on licensed casinos you can bail out your balance and withdraw very fast even if they're BSing you by requesting an account and closure and threatening to contact regulators. I'm not sure if this will work with casinos under the Curacao or Anjuan license though which seems to be the most common here.

This very experience is strange to me because I haven't experienced such before since I started gambling on casinos what I know about is that some casinos will tell you a no KYCs registration on their account and when you win a huge amount of money and wants to withdraw they will restrict the account and be asking of KYC registration and other documents to verify it's actually the person behind the account that's wants to make the withdrawal which is very tiring at times and people who couldn't do all they require leaves the money with them and close the account.

Many of the casinos don't last long in the market because of this greedy act that they display by not allowing the bettors to withdraw their money willingly and looking for means to scam them or probably wants them to reuse the money they have won to rebet again so they equally loose, this people are very tricky and one should be careful with them.

[viljy]

I doubt that this method will work with cryptocurrency casinos that have offshore licenses from distant islands... And, as I understand it, we’re talking about deposits in fiat currency, not cryptocurrency. Of course, there’s a difference between threatening to file a complaint with a regulator that’s right here, nearby, and with a licensing authority on the other side of the world.

On the other hand, this is an interesting example of how casinos easily waive all their requirements to present documents, in other words, it’s not mandatory at all. It seemed to me that the casino requires this from customers because, in turn, law enforcement agencies or something like that require it from the casino.

[Don Pedro Dinero]

I doubt that this method will work with cryptocurrency casinos that have offshore licenses from distant islands...

Of course it won't.

And, as I understand it, we’re talking about deposits in fiat currency, not cryptocurrency. Of course, there’s a difference between threatening to file a complaint with a regulator that’s right here, nearby, and with a licensing authority on the other side of the world.

The difference is that regulators in European countries are there to protect consumers, whereas in cryptocurrency casinos – depending on the country – there is sometimes no regulator at all, or the regulator merely checks that the company complies with anti-money laundering regulations and does not intervene in disputes between players and the casino.

[alani123]

TL;DR: on licensed casinos you can bail out your balance and withdraw very fast even if they're BSing you by requesting an account and closure and threatening to contact regulators.

I totally get the first part, requesting account closure because some of these gambling website follow the strict responsible gambling laws but does this still works if the country has no regulators? I guess without any regulators threat, they will just happily close your account because that also means you are forfeiting your winning balance

If this was me then I'll gladly stay away from their site because if they dont let me withdraw those winnings from free bonus then god knows what they will do with my real deposit someday. Perhaps I might even 'threaten' them that I will post the whole experience on CasinoGuru to let the others know

You have to consider that if your country has no local regulator which acts as the licensing authority, then the casinos you play at are probably licensed in Curacao or Anjuan. These are the licenses we all know as minimal to no regulation so instead of being compelte unlicensed, it's what most crypto casinos prefer.

This is the reason I explicitly said in the OP that this will probably not work in casinos with these licenses. Even more so if a casino has zero licensing, you're entirely dependent on their goodwill to return your balance, so it's not even worth trying I guess.

[Unsoldier]

...

TL;DR: on licensed casinos you can bail out your balance and withdraw very fast even if they're BSing you by requesting an account and closure and threatening to contact regulators. I'm not sure if this will work with casinos under the Curacao or Anjuan license though which seems to be the most common here.

Interesting experience you had. I didn't realize that mentioning the regulator could significantly speed up the verification process. But I don't think this will always work as a universal way to get your money out — a lot depends on the license and the specific casino's rules. Overall, the KYC situation is quite telling: while a player is losing their money, they don't seem to care much about the documents, but as soon as a decent win appears, suddenly there are new requirements and additional checks.

[jcojci]

Congrats if you can use that trick to bail your money out of abusive casinos. Maybe that trick could work in countries that allow gambling but not for those who comes from forbidden countries. We might face that risks of delaying the money because of many reasons from the casinos so that is why we should be selective choosing the casinos. I never experienced this and don't want to have one but so far, I don't have much problem, if I want to withdraw the money, I can do that and I don't takes random bonuses and only choose the bonus that I can take the requirements.

[Fortify]

Last year I did a run on my country's licensed casinos, creating accounts and trying out their bonus schemes just to test the waters and see if any one of them has a good platform to migrate some of my betting activity there.

Many of these platforms are literally giving away free money just for signing up. You get free bets of 20 EUR in some of them. Although the requirements to be able to withdraw this money is sometimes ridiculous, other times it is very relaxed and I did in fact ended up winning hundreds of Euros from 0 deposits and bonuses that were anywhere from 5 EUR to 20 EUR per casino.

There are a lot of crypto casinos out there who are pretending to be in the big leagues, competing with the mega Vegas casino level casinos by offering bonuses. The example you give doesn't even seem that large at $20, because the major sites (in fiat) will often give away $100+ in bonuses that can be relatively simple to unlock. However these crypto casinos often only do it for show or fully expect everyone who redeems them to burn through the deposit money after unlocking it, so it will be part of their strategy to put up obstacles to anyone who does a "hit and run" on their welcome bonuses but it's definitely not right. They do prey on the idea that if you just put an extra 2 or 3 steps into the process, like getting you to resubmit KYC, most will simply give up and not really put up much of a fight. You've shown though that if you're just a little more assertive and can plainly get your message across, then they usually comply, but it's a really scummy practice and casinos doing this should be more publicly shamed. Especially as there will be many people who cannot articulate effectively and also other casinos that will not even heed those warnings.

[DanWalker]

I think one of the most common tricks they could use to hold down your money is either KYC related or rule breach.

It would be incorrect to assume that just because any casino is asking for KYC, they are making up an excuse to withhold player's balance. Verifying AML, source of fund and identity may be legitimate requirement under specific circumstance and such checks may arise at the time of withdrawal. However if they repeatedly ask for new document without providing any specific reason, even after you have submitted proper one or if they impose new condition unrelated to withdrawal after verification is already complete, then there is no doubt that it is a scam casino. Same applies to the involvement of regulator. Having an option to lodge complaint and regulator directly recovering player's money are not same thing. So for any random casino I would first check the exact TOS, the legal basis for KYC request and their written reason for withholding my withdrawal. Then I would escalate the matter.

[Cointxz]

TL;DR: on licensed casinos you can bail out your balance and withdraw very fast even if they're BSing you by requesting an account and closure and threatening to contact regulators. I'm not sure if this will work with casinos under the Curacao or Anjuan license though which seems to be the most common here.

This should be the standard protocol for licensed provider like Curacao and Anjouan.

However, this is not the case for those license provider since they are slow to response and almost non existent for players complaint against casino wearing their license. Everything will be smooth if all license provider work the same way with your local regulator.

My country has a reliable regulator before but now they are corrupt since our government is also corrupt. There’s a lot of recent thread created on our board that shares about jackpot that is not being honored by licensed local online casino here ever since this current administration started, not to mention the previous issue about our national lottery.  

[iv4n]

As some members pointed out, this threat only works when the casino operates under local jurisdiction... So you have somewhere to complain & escalate your issue. It's not a trick, it's leverage you have.

Many companies & services (so not just casinos) will push you around until the moment you start threatening them... It's simple: resolving your issue is cheaper for them. Those stealing tactics expect people to give up. Sometimes even "I wish to talk with the manager/boss" can also be helpful.

[crwth]

Maybe alternative dispute resolution methods could help a member with their problems? I think there should be places where players can go to find people willing to help mediate the problem.

Make sure there is evidence and submit it to that agency or something. This is the most crucial IMO, to make sure that it's actually a legit case.

This would be void if there are abuse done by the players as well. Just a thought. 

[Cityhunter34]

Very true, I have used casinos that use such delay tactics so I can't place my withdrawal on time and after a while I end up using it to place a bet and lose everything, they know that a lot of gamblers would definitely do this that's the reason why they slow down the withdrawal process, this is something that only scam casinos do. Gamblers would definitely get impatient when they have an amount of money in their account that they can't withdraw.

The most annoying part is that there's no way you would be able to win in this situation. Though I think most gamblers normally get lucky sometimes, there's no way we can compare it, because it's already obvious that gambling involves more losses than wins, not to talk of when someone finds himself in this situation.

However, I think the best thing to do in this situation is to have patience and wait until they allow you to withdraw the money, because falling to do so will definitely result in losing everything at once.