bcasino - Account closed and £4k taken. eCogra have sided with them

wesleyhoulihan

Newbie member
PABnoaccred
Joined
Sep 17, 2018
Location
UK
Hi - apologies this is my 1st post but I am furious at what has happened to me. bcasino (I've now read on here they are dodgy) closed my account and took my money citing that I didn't provide KYC docs within 7 days of request which breaches one of their terms (how can they get away with a term like this?). Anyway I did send in the docs but my proof of address doc turned out to be slightly too old (by a week) but it was the most recent I had. The email to inform me of this went to my spam and I didn't see it and a couple of weeks later I got an email that my account had been closed. I immediately opened a complaint with them (and enclosed an updated proof of address) and despite their terms saying they respond to these within 14 business days, I got no response. So I opened a case with eCOGRA.

I've just received the preliminary case file and while they acknowledge I originally sent ID (which had my correct address), photos of bank cards, and a slightly too old proof of address which I subsequently updated, they then say:

"Upon further review, your account was found linked to other accounts by IP address, the details which we are not at liberty to disclose;
· Clause 17 states that an account may be closed and funds withheld on evidence of collusive behaviour:

  1. Prohibited activity
    17.1. By opening an account, you confirm that you will make use of the site solely for personal enjoyment, recreation and entertainment purposes. Any other use of the site is strictly prohibited. In the event of any misuse and/or fraudulent, suspicious, or abusive activity, we reserve the right to freeze the funds and close your account(s) until the matter is resolved, and/or report you to the regulatory authority and any other relevant authorities.
    17.2. You may not:
    i. Sell, transfer and/or acquire accounts to/from other players
    ii. Transfer funds amongst player accounts
    iii. Engage in player collusion
    iv. Use devices such as robots that distort normal game play
    v. Use recognized betting techniques such as Martingale, double-up, or similar systems and strategies
    vi. Exploit a fault, loophole or error
    17.3. If it is found that you are engaging in any of these activities, we reserve the right to block your account and cut all funds in the account.
Given the above, we are satisfied that the operator acted in accordance with 17 of the Terms and Conditions by closing the account and voiding the balance upon evidence of player collusion.

Should you have evidence to the contrary, please submit it to us within the next seven days and we will investigate further. In the absence of having received such evidence, the dispute will be closed in favour of the operator in accordance with this preliminary ruling."

_____________________________________________________________________________
How am I supposed to provide evidence to the contrary of an accusation I know nothing about or for which I am not provided evidence of!

What anyone tell me what options I have left? Don't know what to do. Feeling completely let down by eCOGRA and seeing them side with a casino who are clearly nefarious is infuriating. I don't have anything to hide - I play on a few different devices and in different locations but is that not the whole point of online gaming!


For more information on this casino, check out this detailed review
 
Did you have a duplicate account? If not then you simply say you played on different devices on the same IP. You can't be expected to justify that.
 
The term 'betting strategies such as Martingale' is absolute bollocks too. No strategy will give you an edge, I cannot see the relevance. The CMA have also recently made an announcement that closing accounts due to KYC delays is not to be permitted any longer and is unreasonable.

Then again, bcasino as you said is already
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Did you have a duplicate account? If not then you simply say you played on different devices on the same IP. You can't be expected to justify that.

No, I have one account. The only issue I can see is that I play in different locations on different devices. I am often on long bus journeys for work which I might play on and I work on projects away from home for a few days at a time during the week. But it seems that whoever has seen the 'evidence' bcasino presented them with agrees that it looks suspicious enough to uphold their decision. Just really frustrating.
 
the phrase 'the details which we are not at liberty to disclose' looks like a cop out and prevents you from fairly challenging their ruling. the right to a fair trial including civil cases requires 'access to any evidence relied on by the other party.'
Could you take them to a small claims court or perhaps try to get a newspaper to run your story?
 
Yes, I agree. Any casino that did this to me would find themselves in court. At worst they would have to supply evidence of their claims as part of their defence, so you would find out what they have on you, which should be pretty easy to challenge if it is solely IP based. IP addresses as evidence are routinely dismissed by the courts in piracy claims, should be no problem convincing a court of the same thing in a case against a casino.

Think its shit that affiliates promote casinos like this, especially when they are new and no track record, there must be 100's of people get ripped off by them.

I would respond asking how you can respond to a claim like this, when you haven't seen the evidence they are holding. You cannot possibly dispute their claims without seeing it, and withholding it is prejudicial to your claim. Also point out you weren't told about any dispute regarding collusion, and you feel that part of their defence should be ignored as it was just added onto their response without giving you a chance to address it.

Also, Given the above, we are satisfied that the operator acted in accordance with 17 of the Terms and Conditions by closing the account and voiding the balance upon evidence of player collusion. It doesn't say that, it says they will cut the funds, whatever that means.

It also says we reserve the right to freeze the funds and close your account(s) until the matter is resolved the matter isn't resolved, so therefore they are in breach by voiding the balance.
 
Yes, I agree. Any casino that did this to me would find themselves in court. At worst they would have to supply evidence of their claims as part of their defence, so you would find out what they have on you, which should be pretty easy to challenge if it is solely IP based. IP addresses as evidence are routinely dismissed by the courts in piracy claims, should be no problem convincing a court of the same thing in a case against a casino.

Think its shit that affiliates promote casinos like this, especially when they are new and no track record, there must be 100's of people get ripped off by them.

I would respond asking how you can respond to a claim like this, when you haven't seen the evidence they are holding. You cannot possibly dispute their claims without seeing it, and withholding it is prejudicial to your claim. Also point out you weren't told about any dispute regarding collusion, and you feel that part of their defence should be ignored as it was just added onto their response without giving you a chance to address it.

Also, Given the above, we are satisfied that the operator acted in accordance with 17 of the Terms and Conditions by closing the account and voiding the balance upon evidence of player collusion. It doesn't say that, it says they will cut the funds, whatever that means.

It also says we reserve the right to freeze the funds and close your account(s) until the matter is resolved the matter isn't resolved, so therefore they are in breach by voiding the balance.

Good point actually. May only be a wording error on their behalf but I suppose wording becomes all important if the court gets involved! 17.3 says different in that they 'block' the account and 'cut the funds'. More contradictions though not surprising.

I did respond asking how could I give evidence to the contrary without knowing what I am being accused of, to which the response was just:

"In reviewing the evidence provided by the operator, I have found it to adequately support their claims of suspicious and potentially fraudulent play behaviour.

Kindly note that this is a preliminary ruling which will be reviewed prior to closing the dispute. Should the reviewed outcome be different from the preliminary ruling, you will be informed in accordance.

Should you however remain dissatisfied with such outcome, you are within your right to seek legal recourse through the courts as per Clause 10 of our Policies and Procedures (
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):

10. eCOGRA will use its reasonable efforts to resolve the dispute through reference to the operator’s terms and conditions and a process of non-binding mediation between the player and approved licence holder. The process will follow eCOGRA’s standard practice which may be varied by eCOGRA at any time at its discretion. The process does not restrict a player’s right to bring proceedings against the operator in any court of competent jurisdiction before or following eCOGRA’s proposed solution to the dispute."

To which I have responded:

"My issue here is that I am telling the truth and it is difficult to sit by and be accused of something I haven't done. However, it is impossible to prove that I haven't done something - you can't prove a negative. What I can do is rationalise whatever evidence you think looks suspicious. I understand there may be data protection issues and things you cannot share but surely you can give more detail into why this suspicion exists? Otherwise, I don't see how I can provide further evidence. As I've said, I play on different devices - I have a phone, a laptop, a work phone and a work laptop, and I do quite a bit of travelling for work. I don't believe it is fair for a casino to take what is a substantial and for me, life changing sum of money, because of this.

Can I even know what sort of collusion I am being accused of? I don't even understand how it could be done when all I've done is deposit money, play slots, lost a few deposits and then when I win from one I can't get the money out.

I would be grateful if you could help me to understand how I can prove my innocence here."

Don't think I'm going to get anywhere via this avenue but I'll let it play out.
 
As collins says, bring to them court if the outcome is unsatisfactory. It all sounds fishy to me.
 
I hope I haven't raised everyone's expectations too much :laugh:

Any way I did a bit of delving and normally there is some act of parliament underpinning ombudsman which essentially that's what these adr are, however there was a specific act passed in 2015 covering ADR called:

"The Alternative Dispute Resolution for Consumer Disputes (Competent Authorities and Information) Regulations 2015"

the ukgc mention it here on their page about adr's:

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Anyway when you look up the act, various pages come up, including a handy pdf:

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It's got a lot jargon in it but in the section 7 'fairness' on page 11, it states the following:

Fairness 7.
The body— (a) ensures that during the alternative dispute resolution procedure the parties may, within a reasonable period of time, express their points of view;
(b) provides a party to a dispute within a reasonable period of time, upon request, with the arguments, evidence, documents and facts put forward by the other party to the dispute, including a statement made, or opinion given, by an expert;
(c) ensures that the parties may, within a reasonable period of time, comment on the information and documents provided under paragraph (b);
(d) informs the parties that they are not obliged to retain a legal advisor, but that they may seek independent advice or be represented or assisted by a third party at any stage of the alternative dispute resolution procedure;

I haven't read the whole pdf, so there might be some clause somewhere to restrict (b) above, but at least you could quote the law and see what they say, ukgc might be interested if ecogra ignore the above rules re fairness.

Hope it helps, I'm knackered and off to bed now
 
As expected, no joy. MCOL here we come!
____________________________________
The preliminary findings were reviewed and the dispute has been resolved in favour of the operator. These were reviewed by Ms Tex Rees who is an expert in this field.


Kindly note any information and evidence that can compromise security matters we are not at liberty to disclose. The report provided you communicated the information post our review based on the evidence provided by the operator.


The evidence clearly reveals that you are linked to at least one other account by IP address.


Clause 4.3 of the Terms and Conditions (
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) states that only one account may be opened on the site:

4.3. You may only open one account on this site. We reserve the right to cancel any additional account opened by you. In addition, we reserve the right to cancel all accounts and transactions if we suspect that the registration of multiple accounts has been undertaken with the intent of defrauding or cheating.

mail



Should you wish to pursue this with any legal authority and in accordance with legal procedures, the operator will be requested by such parties to provide them the evidence.
 
So next step - a formal request to the operator to provide the evidence. Will you take them to court?
 
That email was in response to a formal request for the evidence. I cited the fairness term from the ADR regulation. I'll be filing a MCOL against bCasino later today.
 
The evidence clearly reveals that you are linked to at least one other account by IP address.

I have never really understood how the above statement could be used as conclusive proof that accounts, without any shadow of a doubt, can be undeniably linked via a single public IP address. Unless every single individual who connected to the Internet has a unique static IP address then it is entirely possible that totally unrelated connections could be shown as having originated from the same IP address especially as ISP's routinely refresh their available IP address pool resulting in the possibility that your externally visible IP address can change and it is not beyond the realms of reasonable possibility that you then start using an IP address that somebody else has already had the use of. This is even more prevalent since the IPV4 address pool has been exhausted and the pickup of IPV6 is still relatively slow. :confused:
 
I have never really understood how the above statement could be used as conclusive proof that accounts, without any shadow of a doubt, can be undeniably linked via a single public IP address. Unless every single individual who connected to the Internet has a unique static IP address then it is entirely possible that totally unrelated connections could be shown as having originated from the same IP address especially as ISP's routinely refresh their available IP address pool resulting in the possibility that your externally visible IP address can change and it is not beyond the realms of reasonable possibility that you then start using an IP address that somebody else has already had the use of. This is even more prevalent since the IPV4 address pool has been exhausted and the pickup of IPV6 is still relatively slow. :confused:

I know. I'm not up to speed on the IT side of it but from what I've read it would be relatively common. Especially since I've used 3g often as well as WiFi on buses and trains etc. I often stay in serviced apartments which have pooled WiFi as well.

In my view, onus should be on them to prove this beyond further doubt than a shared IP address. Are these accounts that I'm linked to verified? If not, why not? Why not verify accounts on registration or deposit, rather than ignore it until a withdrawal request. Did they let me continue to play knowing that they had a case for not paying me? Also, maybe someone else can answer this - are they able to get an ID or an address of the devices used to login? That would show that these accounts are accessed by different devices.
 
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I know. I'm not up to speed on the IT side of it but from what I've read it would be relatively common. Especially since I've used 3g often as well as WiFi on buses and trains etc. I often stay in serviced apartments which have pooled WiFi as well.

In my view, onus should be on them to prove this beyond further doubt than a shared IP address. Are these accounts that I'm to verified? If not, why not? Why not verify accounts on registration or deposit, rather than ignore it until a withdrawal request. Did they let me continue to play knowing that they had a case for not paying me? Also, maybe someone else can answer this - are they able to get an ID or an address of the devices used to login? That would show that these accounts are accessed by different devices.

They can - and do - get a unique MAC address for each device used to connect to them.

Unofrtunately rightly or wrongly I do t think you are going to get your money from this. If it was me its enough money for a legal claim/push but thats your choice
 
They can - and do - get a unique MAC address for each device used to connect to them.

Unofrtunately rightly or wrongly I do t think you are going to get your money from this. If it was me its enough money for a legal claim/push but thats your choice

Oh I know, I'm done with the ADR route but as I said I'll be filing a MCOL today.
 
A mac address can be altered quite simply . What i would say is that it's entirely plausible for someone to access your home wifi signal or connect via your phone using it as an 'hotspot - it ids unlikely though that they connected just to play at the same casino as you !

the account - the one that they claim is yours - should have proof that you deposited and that it matches your home address . They cannot just take an IP address as proof - for instance you could live within a communal building such as refuge or homeless shelter or warden controlled residential home - where everyone shared the wifi connection . Someone could make an account and then within a week or two move to different premises - does that mean that nobody else within that place can open or use the wifi to access that casino ever again ?
 

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