Rogue / Blacklisted Casinos

What Makes a Rogue Casino?

Unfortunately, there are many different ways that rogue casinos can operate; sometimes, these sites are running a completely illegal online gambling operation, but others employ unethical but not necessarily illegal tactics. Below, we’re going to run you through some of the most common things we see rogue online casinos doing:

Lack of Fair Gaming

One of the most common things you’ll see at dodgy online casinos is a complete and utter lack of fair gaming. Many of these blacklisted sites — although they appear like thoroughly reputable online casinos — use shady online gambling platforms that aren’t tested and licensed, and many don’t even bother to apply for an online gaming license.

Not only does this mean you’re putting your fate (and your money) into the hands of, well, who knows who — it also means that the online slots you play, the casino games, and the live casino games you play could all be running on unaudited software.

What’s more, as there’s no way of confirming the fairness of play, you have no idea whether the casino games you’re playing are even legitimate. We cover this in more depth in a separate section below, but it all ties into the lack of fair gaming, something we see at pretty much every rogue site.

Online Casinos and Bonus Fraud

One of the biggest complaints about an online casino you’ll find online today is players claiming welcome bonuses, deposit bonus offers and free spin promotions at casinos who find, upon trying to cash out their winnings, that the casino is arbitrarily applying unfair terms and conditions. Worse still, some online casino sites go as far as even changing their terms and conditions pages if a player hits a big win.

Blacklisted online casinos may advertise amazing-looking welcome bonus offers in an attempt to lure in new players. Still, when it comes to the terms and conditions, there can be some incredibly ridiculous terms. Worse still, some online casinos may confiscate your bonus winnings without telling you why!

Always check our casino blacklist before joining a site you haven’t heard of before and try to remember the old saying: if something looks too good to be true, it probably is.

Refusing to Pay Out Winnings

Casino payment problems are something most casinos on our blacklisted list have in common. If you read casino reviews for any blacklisted site here, there’s a good chance you’ll see an entire section dedicated to casino payment problems.

It’s all too common, at blacklisted sites, for casino payment problems to appear, but never do they occur when you’re making deposits. Never do they occur when you’re continually funding your account to play casino games.

No, these casino payment problems only ever occur when you’re trying to cash out. It’s one of the hallmarks of rogue sites; they’ll let you deposit as much money as you want and play their casino games as much as you can, but when it comes to making a withdrawal — that’s when the casino payment problems begin.

Some sites will try to state that you’ve broken some obscure term in their terms and conditions page and run you around the mill for months on end, while others will simply not cash out your winnings and ignore any attempts you make to contact their customer support team.

It’s a really unfortunate reality, and we see it time and time again in the forums. There are so many scam artists out there today who simply don’t care about stealing from players. It’s yet another reason why it’s so essential only to play casinos you trust. We can help you find the best online casinos to play at here at Casinomeister, so be sure to check out our recommended casinos page!

Poor Security and Privacy 

Aside from questionable practices, online payment problems, deposit bonuses that are too good to be true, and the fact that they’re just cheating players a lot of the time, many of the sites you’ll see listed here on this page have terrible on-site security. This could be classified as questionable practice in itself.

This poor security means that your personal and sensitive data could be at risk. For example, when you use banking methods to make a deposit, your debit and credit card details could be stolen. Any ID documents you upload could be stored insecurely.

Make sure you only ever give your payment and sensitive information to completely fair sites. You can find a list of excellent casinos right here at Casinomeister.

No Response Online Casinos

Customer support — or, shall we say, a lack of it — is one of the hallmarks of bad casinos, and it’s yet another of the questionable practices that most blacklisted sites seem to share.

Poor customer support or nonexistent customer support is something you should expect to see at most of the shady casinos on this page. Maybe you have a question about the biggest welcome bonuses they’re offering, have a problem with their table games, or want to know about the special ultimate bet promotion that you won money on. Later, you find that when it comes to asking these questions, they go answered.

Many casinos will simply give you the cold shoulder. They may respond to you before you run into problems, but if, for example, you hit a nice win and want to make a withdrawal, expect those emails to go unanswered and those live chat sessions to never connect.

Thankfully, good casinos with fair games offer 24 hours a day, seven days a week customer support, so when you play at the right site, you don’t have to worry about poor customer support. On the other hand, Rogue sites, poor customer support and rogue gaming casinos go hand in hand!

Online Casino Rigged Games/Stolen Software

Arguably one of the biggest dangers of playing at an online casino that’s not licensed — or that simply doesn’t care about sticking to the rules — is the fact that you’re playing on software that’s either rigged or stolen. Let’s look at the difference.

Stolen software is when a casino (usually Russian-based sites) steals games from a company like NetEnt or Microgaming and then hosts these games on their own server. These games look identical from a graphical standpoint; the graphics, audio, bonuses, and features are all the same.

However, as the shady casino is hosting these games themselves, there’s no telling what they may have done to them, and that’s not to mention the fact that they’re broken multiple laws in stealing the intellectual property of another company.

On the other hand, Rigged games are games that are built from the beginning to cheat players. For example, you may play a progressive jackpot game that isn’t physically capable of paying out the progressive jackpot, or you may play video slots that have an RTP as low as 10%.

When you play at a licensed casino, every game has to be independently audited and certified, so you know you’re always playing a fair game. At unlicensed casinos, this isn’t the case; if you end up playing one of these rigged/stolen machines, there’s a pretty good chance you’ll lose all of your money incredibly quickly.

Dirty Affiliate Tricks

Affiliate websites — like us here at Casinomeister — make their living by getting paid a small amount of money when new players sign-up to a casino through their site. While we don’t allow brands to pay to make our recommended lists (actually, it’s the complete opposite), we do make a small amount of money from casinos — we are a business, after all!

However, shady casinos also have a habit of not paying affiliates like us. It’s not just players they stick to scamming. We’ve experienced it time and time again with rogue platforms. They make us think they’re a great new business venture, we begin to start earning, and then, when it comes to paying us, they start ignoring us.

As a company, we can deal with it; it’s the cost of doing business. But think, if they’re doing this to us, do you really think they’re going to end up paying out their players’ winnings? Nope. 

That’s why we have an entire section of our blacklist (see below) dedicated to casinos that scam affiliates, so other affiliates know which casinos to avoid, too!

False Advertising

False advertising is another major problem we find at scam casinos a lot. It often occurs when a casino says that they have a gaming license from a specific regulator when they really don’t.

In fact, the world’s biggest regulators like the MGA have started issuing statements when brands do this. Thankfully, it’s pretty easy to tell whether or not a casino holds a valid gaming license.

All licensed casinos are required to display their license in the footer portion of their website. In most cases, this is a clickable link; you can verify with the regulator on their website that this link is legit, so you can check yourself to make sure the casino is actually licensed and operating under the prefixes that they say they are.

Encouraging Problem Gambling

One of the most despicable practices we see rogue online casinos participating in is the advocacy of encouraging problem gambling. Some sites have been seen actively creating pages on their website targeted at keywords surrounding people trying to ban themselves from all forms of gambling online just to get them to join their site!

In addition to this, even if a casino doesn’t blatantly try to make people gamble when they shouldn’t, most rogue platforms simply won’t have the responsible gambling tools you’d find at legit casinos. You’ll not be able to set deposit limits, take a time-out or enter into a self-exclusion agreement.