Golden Nile Casino is not paying winnings

[maxle]

Hello,

this is a warning for other players, that they should not deposit money at Golden Nile Casino and sisters, because it is not sure that they pay out the winnings when the player wins. They are just looking for excuses.

What happened ?

Many years ago I opened an account at Golden Nile Casino and I played there sometimes. I like to travel much, so I played there some years ago at my vacation in India.
In November 2005 I deposited $400 and got a nice bonus and was lucky to win a bigger amount of over $5800 after playing very much.
I cashed out the monthly maximum of $2500 via Neteller. This was paid after 3 weeks. I was wondering why it takes so much time, because if I deposit it works in minutes.
In December 2005 I made holidays in Thailand (I like Asia, it is very nice to be there in winter). From there I logged in into my casino account at an internet cafe. I asked for a cash out of further $2500. I made it in my holidays, because the casino took so much time to pay out.

Back in my home in Germany I found out that my second cashout was not processed and my casino account was locked. I asked the support of Golden Nile, after two weeks the support of Americangrand Casino answered to my Email:

"Unfortunately you have been banned from the casino. This is managements decision and this decision is final.
The reason as to why you have been banned is because your IP address does not match the country which you stated you were playing from.
Your withdrawal has been cancelled and will not be processed.
...
Mark.
Golden Nile Casino
www.crystalpalacecasino.com"

In the terms&condition of the website of Golden Nile Casino nothing is written about, that it is not allowed to play while doing holidays in other countries. What is more, they allowed me many years ago to play in India, and I deposited money several times after it, and they never had anything against.
But if I want to cash out, then this becomes a problem. So it just looks like a cheap excuse.

In their Emails they seem to confuse their own casinos, so they appear in the same Email as Golden Nile Casino, American Grand Casino and Crystal Palace Casino.

In the "pitch a bitch"-section Bryan writes that for RTG-Casinos I should contact the Montana Dispute Resolution Team (MDR). I did this in the begin of January. They work very slow, three month later in April 2006 I got the answer:

"Based on the facts provided by the casino, we have confirmed that on several occassions in November 2005 you logged in from an IP address coming from Netherlands and in December you logged in from an Australian IP. This is a violation of the casino terms and conditions, and borders on a fradulency.
The terms and conditions can be found at: http://www.goldennilecasino.com/terms.html
We have requested the Operator to refund your deposit of $400.00 which was made when your account last zeroed out."

This was strange: Why they pay out $400 more (the money was paid into my Neteller account) ? They already paid out $2500 (from my first cashout request), according to their logic I got already back my deposit. They really seem to be a bit unorganized.

But what is more strange: I was never in Australia, and I never played from the Netherlands. (The border of the Netherlands is 60km away from the city of Koeln, where I live.) So I asked them for details. The MDR wrote:

"Here are the IP addresses: 84.44.231.121 - 84.44.231.170 - 87.78.55.16 - 87.78.50.107 - 87.78.44.241 (Netherlands), 58.147.54.5 (Australia), 61.11.21.188 (India). Note that casinos utilize software tools that match IP addresses with corresponding countries, and once the country of IP does not match country of residence some casinos will consider this as fraudlent activity."

I checked the IP-addresses with an IP-Tracer (you find free/shareware in the internet, e.g. http://www.softwareriver.com/downloa...ois2004-11.exe)
I found out that they matched the wrong countries to the IP-addresses.

84.44.231.121 - 84.44.231.170 87.78.55.16 - 87.78.50.107 - 87.78.44.241 are all in Koeln, Germany and not in Netherlands as they say. They are from NetCologne GmbH, Germany.
58.147.54.5 is in Thailand (as I told them) and not in Australia as they say. The whois entry says: TT&T, Internet Service Provider, Bangkok, Thailand
61.11.21.188 is in India.

I told this to the MDR and I proposed to send them a copy of my passport with the visa for Thailand in it, but they didnt wanted to hear and they didnt wanted to check the matching of the country with the IP-addresses.

They still owe me $2900. I dont see any possibility to get paid anymore. They just keep my money.

So I decided want to warn other players before this casino group. As I read from other threads its is the Warren Cloud (WC) Casino Group. In Google I found a link (Strangely enough, I can not find this in the Forum-Section of the casinomeister. But fortunately there is google):
http://www.casinomeister.com/forums/...ion-print.html

There Bryan says: "The point is is that Warren has requested to have his casinos removed from the rogue section and placed on probation. He feels that he has turned over a new leaf, and he feels that he has earned recognition for paying his players. Probation means that if the casino keeps its act together for six months - they are removed from the rogue section. If they ef up - they are thrown back in."

But there are so many complaints now against the WC (btw. a very fitting abbreviation), so that the WC should be put in the Rogue Casino section.

[vinylweatherman]

Since you have posted the disputed IP addresses, it should be easy to see who is right in this.
I have not checked myself, but if they appear to be from the countries that the casino lists, there stance is understandable, however, if lookups show that the casino has got every single one wrong, coupled with the fact they refuse to double check the facts to make sure, gives the impression that once they find a reason not to pay, they will do their best to stick to it.

This is certainly not the only casino to pull this one, but exactly how accurate ARE these IP checks in detecting fraud. Internet users do NOT have control of their IP address, it is the ISP that decides this. Many ISP's now use load balancing and proxy servers, including transparent proxies. This renders IP alone a very poor indicator of fraudulent activity. If the casino has a term forbidding play from particular locations, SEPARATE to the place of residency clauses, they have grounds for complaint. The only legitimate casino that has this clause is Lasseters and Ausvegas - NO PLAYER is allowed to place wagers while they are physically in Australia, irrrespective of whether they are an Australian national or not. Australian nationals are not allowed to open an account. This is part of their government licence.

Crystal Gaming want to list in London, their stance has nothing to do with UK laws, it is their own policy, fine - but only if they make it absolutely clear to players that they cannot play from certain countries even if they live in a country accepted by the casino.

[maxle]

I found an interesting link about Warren Cloud:
http://www.gamblog.co.uk/2005/09/war...inomeister.htm

There is written:
"Warren Cloud may well have gagged the Casinomeister - but Warren Cloud cannot gag the blogosphere. The Casinomeister Bryan Bailey has had to remove all mention of Warren Cloud from his casino watchdog forum, most likely via lawyers advice. I doubt that will last long, the Meister (Bryan Bailey) will bite back 1 day."

Now I understand, why the WC Casinos are not listed in the rogue section.

@Bryan: I hope you are not getting any trouble because I am posting this here. Your do a really great work, just tell if you dont want to let appear this information here. Then I wont write it again.

[vinylweatherman]

The proposed stockmarket listing may have had a bearing on decisions regarding Rogue status. In legal terms, if something defamatory is said about a person and their business, they can take legal action for libel, and the "owner" of the publication where the libel resides has to show that the material is based on fact. However, if another poster posts something in a thread, then the responsibility of the site owner is in whether to remove or allow the post based on less stringent criteria.
Postings of actual experience about Warren and his businesses will remain, however personal abuse of Warren would not be allowed as it deflects from the issue at hand. Far more damaging would be a well argued demonstration that the casino is completely wrong in the matter, and has been incompetent in determining the origin of the IP addresses that was used to make the decision.
I am surprised that players still take up his frankly "over the top" bonus offers of the order of $10,000!! If you never take a bonus at Crystal Gaming there rarely seems to be a problem, however the huge bonuses are used as a lure to catch big deposits.

[Casinomeister]

Originally Posted by maxle

There is written:
"Warren Cloud may well have gagged the Casinomeister - but Warren Cloud cannot gag the blogosphere. The Casinomeister Bryan Bailey has had to remove all mention of Warren Cloud from his casino watchdog forum, most likely via lawyers advice.

Speculation. This is Amandajm's website and I've asked him to either rephrase this or remove it because it's misleading. He never bothered to reply.

There were a number of posters that were personally attacking the operator (stating he was molested as a child, etc.) and I chose to remove these comments from public view. There were issues that landed this casino group into the rogue pit some years ago, but once these were resolved along with a passage of time they were placed in the "probation" section. Time passed and they were removed from there.

On the other hand, there have been a few recent complaints that may warrant a revisting of these issues. I have been out of the loop for the past couple of weeks, but I am aware of a couple of complaints that were resolved quickly. The casino manager is a member of the forum and I would suggest PMing him for the time being.

[wheresmymoney]

Golden Nile is part of the worst group in the history of Online Gaming. They'll tell you all kinds lies and excuses to obfuscate the real issue. They have no intention of paying you. I was robbed of $5,100 not to long ago. They send you unsolicited emails from the sister casinos and then ban you from another one. So you can lose all you want, but when you win you get shafted. Check out my post "Doleplex Specializes in Double Jeopardy" to read my sob story

[maxle]

Thank you Bryan.

Yes, not everything is true that is written in the Web, and perhaps the Casino Group is not like it appeared to me reading the old posts.

I just PMed Oliver Curran, lets see whats happening.

[maxle]

Mr Curran is not answering, thats bad :-(

Besides that the casino just keeps my money, I am also disturbed by their long response times and their way of communication:

- To pay my cash out to netteller they took over three weeks. But if you pay money into the casino account it takes some seconds.
- The locked my account without telling me about.
- I had to ask 3 times (via Email) before I got the confirmation from the support that my account was locked.
- I filled the form at Montana Dispute resolution (MDR). After the MDR asking the Casino for a statment, it took 2.5 months until the casino answered.
- The MDR was not ready to look at the facts that the IP-adresses are not matching the countries they told.

By the way, the new forums are nice, but my complaint is not an bonus issue. When depositing I got a bonus, but the casino was paying out a third of my winnings. But they decided to keep the rest of my money because of a strange reason that is not included in the terms and conditions. They never said that this was a bonus issue.
But I dont know how to move this thread to the non-Bonus-issues.

[chuchu59]

Originally Posted by maxle

Mr Curran is not answering, thats bad :-(

Besides that the casino just keeps my money, I am also disturbed by their long response times and their way of communication:

- To pay my cash out to netteller they took over three weeks. But if you pay money into the casino account it takes some seconds.
- The locked my account without telling me about.
- I had to ask 3 times (via Email) before I got the confirmation from the support that my account was locked.
- I filled the form at Montana Dispute resolution (MDR). After the MDR asking the Casino for a statment, it took 2.5 months until the casino answered.
- The MDR was not ready to look at the facts that the IP-adresses are not matching the countries they told.

By the way, the new forums are nice, but my complaint is not an bonus issue. When depositing I got a bonus, but the casino was paying out a third of my winnings. But they decided to keep the rest of my money because of a strange reason that is not included in the terms and conditions. They never said that this was a bonus issue.
But I dont know how to move this thread to the non-Bonus-issues.

Mr. Curran last visited this site on the 22nd of this month. So it seems he is not on holiday and only chooses not to respond.

[LinkMeistress]

Can someone enlighten me? VIA PM, PLEASE. Was/is Vegas Frontier or Real Vegas (or whatever they call themselves these days, lol) a part of this group? And if anyone can direct me to more information, I'd appreciate it.

Thanks!

LM