Betfair stole 8575.42 Euro from my Moneybookers / Skrill account

Objectively I haven't violated any rule. However I'm sure that if I reveal all details a lot people would interpret this as some kind of borderline situation. Currently I don't want to weak my position by revealing all details, because I maybe will take this to court.

Currently the only Casinomeister member who knows the details is Jufo. Jufo, I invite you to publicly state your opinion to my advantage play, if you want to. This hopefully helps to retain my trustability.


Yes, Betfair has closed my account.
Since you decided to make this a very public issue, I would recommend following through and explain exactly what you did, and why you think you were dealt with the way you were. Obviously you are an advantage player - it would be helpful for everyone reading this to know exactly what happened. Otherwise, this is just a thread designed to besmirch Betfair's rep. This forum is for solving problems; not for throwing around accusations.

... Moneybookers basicly told us, as they are telling you, to go f*** yourself and hid behind terms, that basicly says...we can do whatever the hell we want, when we want and tough sh** for you..
Please refrain from colorful language - there are ladies in the house.

... On the other hand I can understand a webmaster earnings tens or maybe hundreds of thousands in comission every month from betfair don't take any risks...
Don't bogart that joint m'friend, pass it over to me... :p

But seriously, I would be willing to consider accepting a PAB from Markus. I would rather give Betfair a chance to get their act together instead of adding another entry to their Rogue listing. Perhaps this is a chance for them to get with the program of dealing with players in a fair manner.
 
Currently the only Casinomeister member who knows the details is Jufo. Jufo, I invite you to publicly state your opinion to my advantage play, if you want to. This hopefully helps to retain my trustability.

TBH I don't really want to :oops: Yes, Markus and I exchanged a few PMs where he told me the whole story. I contacted him first because I was interested in what had happened. So given what I know I thought it was best to stay out of this thread because I wanted to leave it up to Markus to decide how much information he wants to reveal.

Since you asked me to state my opinion Markus, I guess I will then. You definitely outsmarted the casino big time and played in a manner that may or may not violate the casino's t+c. I believe we haven't had a case quite like this at CM before. If the casino simply decided not to pay your winnings then I might agree that they did the right decision. But given that they did pay you, the only way they are allowed to claim the money back from Moneybookers is through a dispute process, where your position is also heard. They didn't offer you that position, ie. didn't follow the correct protocol which in my opinion gives you the right to claim the money back even if you didn't play above board at the casino. In other words one might say that BOTH parties did wrong here.

Also, Markus, I have discussed your case with a couple of my acquaintances in private (I didn't tell exact details to them so don't worry) and unfortunately both of them said to me that you don't have a leg to stand on with this case, as they believe that the general t+c's of the bookie/casino have a clause against this type of play you did. So it's ultimately a matter of you proving that the play you did was indeed fully allowed by casino's t+c.
 
If we trust Jufo's judgement and I can see no reason why we shouldnt it seems that Markus' style of play was unacceptable to Betfair. As Jufo said, BF did not follow protocol and allow Markus to dispute the allegation against him. As it seems both sides have erred, albeit on different things, maybe they should sit down and come to a settlement. Whilst MB should not be involved in this 'advantage play' issue, they should participate lest they be viewed as easily succumbing to casinos initiating a chargeback.

Markus, you should now sit back, stop posting and seriously consider submitting a PAB as advised by Bryan. Jufo has posted his comments and there seems little more you can do.
 
Since you asked me to state my opinion Markus, I guess I will then. You definitely outsmarted the casino big time and played in a manner that may or may not violate the casino's t+c. I believe we haven't had a case quite like this at CM before. If the casino simply decided not to pay your winnings then I might agree that they did the right decision. But given that they did pay you, the only way they are allowed to claim the money back from Moneybookers is through a dispute process, where your position is also heard.


What Markus did at Betfair is completely beside the point. It was Moneybookers that took money out of his account and sent it to Betfair. And apparently all Betfair had to do was claim he violated their terms and conditions.

As a financial institution, Moneybookers should not be allowed to do that without a court order IMO. This opens the floodgates were casinos can claim all sorts of terms violations, "bonus abuse" and "spirit abuse", and get their money back from ewallets if they missed the "abuse" earlier.

If Markus did something so bad it not only contravened terms and conditions but also the law, then Betfair should go to the police and pursue it through the legal system.

This is just outrageous behaviour by Moneybookers.
 
What Markus did at Betfair is completely beside the point. It was Moneybookers that took money out of his account and sent it to Betfair. And apparently all Betfair had to do was claim he violated their terms and conditions.

As a financial institution, Moneybookers should not be allowed to do that without a court order IMO. This opens the floodgates were casinos can claim all sorts of terms violations, "bonus abuse" and "spirit abuse", and get their money back from ewallets if they missed the "abuse" earlier.

If Markus did something so bad it not only contravened terms and conditions but also the law, then Betfair should go to the police and pursue it through the legal system.

This is just outrageous behaviour by Moneybookers.

Agreed 100%:eek:

Reading through this it has made me unwilling to use MB in future!
It's tantamount to theft!:eek:
I don't care what Markus did or how questionable it was, that is beside the point. The real issue here is that MB can have free access to players funds and send them off to other institutions with out any permission from the player whatsoever! Appalling! :mad:
Imagine if I received a cheque from a lottery for $5000, deposited it to my bank and waited three days for it to clear. I now have $5000 clear cash in my bank.Suddenly the lottery realises it had made a mistake and I hadn't actually won $5000 but had actually won $50. So they just trot on down to my bank and go up to the teller and withdraw $4950 from my bank account with the bank managers permission as they have explained to him that they had made a mistake! The media would be all over this story in a heartbeat!
Would never happen in RL and should never happen online either! What's mine is mine until I give you permission to make it yours!


Cheers
Gremmy
 
As for the relationship between Moneybookers and Betfair, I had an informative chat with some Moneybookers VIP personnel last summer and they told me that Betfair is by far their biggest customer. Whereas smaller joints pay 2% - 4% to Moneybookers for every player's deposit or withdrawal, Betfair only has to pay around 1% because if it's enormous volume. Moneybookers would never risk losing their biggest customer which leads me to believe that they are always going to do whatever Betfair demands them to do. I am not sure if this confiscation would have happened if it was some other entity with less power than Betfair.
 
As for the relationship between Moneybookers and Betfair, I had an informative chat with some Moneybookers VIP personnel last summer and they told me that Betfair is by far their biggest customer. Whereas smaller joints pay 2% - 4% to Moneybookers for every player's deposit or withdrawal, Betfair only has to pay around 1% because if it's enormous volume. Moneybookers would never risk losing their biggest customer which leads me to believe that they are always going to do whatever Betfair demands them to do. I am not sure if this confiscation would have happened if it was some other entity with less power than Betfair.

This is corruption. Charging less is fine, but caving in to demands without going through due process just because a big merchant throws their weight around is just as corrupt as slipping a bribe to an official in order to get your issue expedited.

Advantage play is simply a player seeking to win, rather than have fun losing. Betfair also "advantage play" when they use marketing and psychological trickery to manipulate customers into believing a deal is far better than it is. Many businesses do this, and many overstep the boundaries and get sanctioned by the ASA. Betfair have a number of sanctions from the ASA, but rather than mend they ways, they do things a little different in order to sidestep the intent (or if you like, the "spirit") of the rules, which was to prevent businesses misrepresenting their services to consumers. If the industry can do it, I don't see why clever players should feel ashamed of beating the industry at their own game.

What is particularly bad about this case is the retrospective nature of the action, which is why it had to be done via a "chargeback". When a player decides to deal with a dispute via a chargeback, they are automatically demonised and classed as a fraud, even if the casino has blatantly ripped them off, and they have an unarguable legal right to ask their card issuer for the return of their money. It should be the same for a casino, if they charge back from a players' personal account, be it bank or eWallet, they should also be demonised whatever the circumstances.

It seems this distinction between being a bank and an "eMoney issuer" is FAR more significant than players think, and in particular strips the player of many of the consumer and legal rights they take for granted, such as a fair and unbiased dispute process.


In this case, Moneybookers simply took the money back because Betfair said so, yet when KK was clearly defrauded via his Moneybookers account being hacked, he was told there was no way to retrieve his money because it had disappeared into a merchant account. This is hardly an unbiased process.

Betfair should have been told the same, the OP had already moved the money to his bank, so it should have been too late for Betfair to ask for it back.

I don't believe Betfair even had to state a case, let alone give Moneybookers evidence. This was discovered quite some time ago when a casino charged back a payment from a Neteller account 14 days after it was paid in because they decided the player had violated the "spirit of the bonus". The same argument was raised, that the casino had to have lied to Neteller, but in this case the rep DID engage, and said that all they had to do was ask Neteller to reverse the payment, and they did, there was no need to say why, thus no need to lie.

Of course the rep was "crucified" and quickly apologised and gave the money back to the player, but at this point we all learned that such things COULD be done, and astonishingly easily.

It also seems that Moneybookers lied to the OP by implying it was an unspecified breach of Moneybookers terms, when it was really a case of them bowing to the demands of their biggest merchant, a procedure you will NOT see outlined in the terms and conditions.

I expect this is covered in the merchant agreement, which is why non merchants are not even allowed to know the merchant account terms and conditions, and only get to see them after they have been approved as a merchant, and need to agree to them.

Whilst the OP may have a weak case over what was done during play, any court claim could be about the procedure used to recover the money, rather than the reason why. Unfortunately "spirit of" has no place in a court, and unless evidence is supplied of a specific breach of the terms, even the reason behind the action will not stand up.

Unless what the OP did constituted fraud, Betfair don't really have a case. Even a breach of terms and conditions does not justify what Betfair did, they should have taken civil proceedings to recover damages.


The ASA have already determined that Betfair had no case over the "happy hour" fiasco, but it is a shame their powers are limited to ordering that the breach not be repeated.

Moneybookers also risk losing players over the publicity surrounding this issue, as it makes it very clear that money is not really "yours" even when in your own eWallet account, and can be recalled at any time by the casino that paid it in.

The industry will also suffer because players will feel more justified in using their power of chargeback to resolve a dispute with a casino, rather than using mediation. It seems that PLAYERS have a similar power when they use the chargeback system to get their losses back because the system itself is biased AGAINST casinos, that operate at best in a "grey area" when it comes to card deposits, and so are unlikely to avail themselves of the opportunity the system grants them as merchants to put their side forward, thus the banks issue the "chargeback" by default because of a "no show" by the merchant. This is also why online casinos suffer so heavily from chargeback fraud, despite the system having been designed to strike a fair balance between customer and merchant.


What the OP did appears to be the equivalent of "card counting", turning a -EV game into a +EV opportunity. B & M casinos can ban a player from "card counting", but they CANNOT go into their bank accounts and take back monies paid out from previous visits, nor even take money from them after they leave. Even where blatant cheating is involved, they have to take the player to court, as happened with the team that used electronic wizardry to beat Roulette in a UK casino, and where the casino failed to prove that they had sufficient grounds to ask for the return of winnings already paid out from previous visits.
 
Sorry Vinyl I refuse to read your post.

It's too short.

On a different note, were/are you a lawyer? Just wondering because you do express a lot of legal opinions. Its a serious question btw.

I have watched many documentaries about consumer law, and read many articles about such cases. This has shown me how the law is interpreted in many situations, as well as which path should be the best means to pursue a case.

Strictly speaking, this applies to UK consumer law, and only by implication does this cover other EU countries as many of these laws have their origins in EU directives.

What is currently lacking is a back catalogue of online gambling related cases, and it is hardly a surprise since it was only in 2007 that gambling debts became enforcable in law with the introduction of the new gambling act. This means that players can pursue operators for their winnings just as they can pursue any other business that has promised a service, and failed to supply it.
It was the OPERATORS that pressed the government to make this change, because they wanted to be able to enforce debts run up by gamblers on the many credit based "sports" betting operations. These generally give you a credit limit, and every couple of weeks you are sent either a bill or a cheque. My dad used to have an account at one for many years until their minimum bet became too large for his liking. Every fortnight, he got a cheque or a bill. However, before 2007 he could have refused to pay, and there would have been little the operator could do other than blacklist him. It was only the fear of never being able to use such a service again that ensured customers paid up.

Many cases come down to the concept of "common law", where a particular case creates a precedent that can then be used to strengthen future cases. Common law is often not what was intended when the laws were made, and often highlights unintended consequences from the application of several laws to a case.
On top of this, there is a distinction between normal contract law, and consumer contract law. Consumers are given additional protections because they do not normally have the levels of access to legal opinion that businesses have, and businesses have in the past used obscure legal trickery to legalise the screwing over of customers. This has resulted in laws such as the unfair business practices act, which makes some types of contractural terms illegal, even if drafted correctly. This means that the consumer can have a clause struck out on the grounds that it is "unfair" in a consumer contract. One sided contracts are also considered unfair. These are when the businesses give themselves loads of "get out of jail free" cards, yet require the consumer to perform miracles in keeping their side of the bargain.

Many casino terms are very one sided in favour of the operator, as well as being poorly drafted. Many could find themselves in trouble if these were tested in court. It is no accident that operators do their best to make it hard for players to use the courts, mainly through using obscure offshore licensing jurisdictions and complex company arrangements. Players are often told they have to take a case to court in Malta, or Curacao, which is likely to put many off. In the case of Malta, this is not strictly true, as an EU player can apply to the courts to have the case transferred to their home country on the grounds that they as a consumer are unfairly penalised by having to take on a business on THEIR home turf, and against their expensive legal teams.
 
I have watched many documentaries about consumer law, and read many articles about such cases. This has shown me how the law is interpreted in many situations, as well as which path should be the best means to pursue a case.

Strictly speaking, this applies to UK consumer law, and only by implication does this cover other EU countries as many of these laws have their origins in EU directives.

What is currently lacking is a back catalogue of online gambling related cases, and it is hardly a surprise since it was only in 2007 that gambling debts became enforcable in law with the introduction of the new gambling act. This means that players can pursue operators for their winnings just as they can pursue any other business that has promised a service, and failed to supply it.
It was the OPERATORS that pressed the government to make this change, because they wanted to be able to enforce debts run up by gamblers on the many credit based "sports" betting operations. These generally give you a credit limit, and every couple of weeks you are sent either a bill or a cheque. My dad used to have an account at one for many years until their minimum bet became too large for his liking. Every fortnight, he got a cheque or a bill. However, before 2007 he could have refused to pay, and there would have been little the operator could do other than blacklist him. It was only the fear of never being able to use such a service again that ensured customers paid up.

Many cases come down to the concept of "common law", where a particular case creates a precedent that can then be used to strengthen future cases. Common law is often not what was intended when the laws were made, and often highlights unintended consequences from the application of several laws to a case.
On top of this, there is a distinction between normal contract law, and consumer contract law. Consumers are given additional protections because they do not normally have the levels of access to legal opinion that businesses have, and businesses have in the past used obscure legal trickery to legalise the screwing over of customers. This has resulted in laws such as the unfair business practices act, which makes some types of contractural terms illegal, even if drafted correctly. This means that the consumer can have a clause struck out on the grounds that it is "unfair" in a consumer contract. One sided contracts are also considered unfair. These are when the businesses give themselves loads of "get out of jail free" cards, yet require the consumer to perform miracles in keeping their side of the bargain.

Many casino terms are very one sided in favour of the operator, as well as being poorly drafted. Many could find themselves in trouble if these were tested in court. It is no accident that operators do their best to make it hard for players to use the courts, mainly through using obscure offshore licensing jurisdictions and complex company arrangements. Players are often told they have to take a case to court in Malta, or Curacao, which is likely to put many off. In the case of Malta, this is not strictly true, as an EU player can apply to the courts to have the case transferred to their home country on the grounds that they as a consumer are unfairly penalised by having to take on a business on THEIR home turf, and against their expensive legal teams.

Why even reply to someones dumb remarks. It doesn't matter if you are a lawyer or not as I would hope anyone paying to gamble online knows the basic laws that govern credit card deposits, contracts and legal rights afforded by law. You don't have to be a lawyer to know the law, you can read the laws that apply to any circumstance by visiting State and Federal websites and reading the statutes. I agree with your previous posts.
 
Why even reply to someones dumb remarks. It doesn't matter if you are a lawyer or not as I would hope anyone paying to gamble online knows the basic laws that govern credit card deposits, contracts and legal rights afforded by law. You don't have to be a lawyer to know the law, you can read the laws that apply to any circumstance by visiting State and Federal websites and reading the statutes. I agree with your previous posts.

Nifty complained that my post was too short, and then asked whether I had studied or worked in law. I was therefore obligated (keyboard permitting), to respond with a lengthy answer;)
 
Nifty complained that my post was too short, and then asked whether I had studied or worked in law. I was therefore obligated (keyboard permitting), to respond with a lengthy answer;)

I am on your side but have found replying to Nifty usually is a worthless endeavor. As I said previously, whether you are a lawyer or not has no bearing on your ability to make an informative and intelligent comment as you did.
 
I am on your side but have found replying to Nifty usually is a worthless endeavor. As I said previously, whether you are a lawyer or not has no bearing on your ability to make an informative and intelligent comment as you did.

IMO that is a total cop out.

I always appreciate an informative and intelligent reply I.e. where the post doesn't call someone's opinion "dumb" (especially when it comes from someone who has trouble with basic grammar etc) or "not worth replying to".

I'm not saying any of this applies to you personally, these are general observations, but I find that people who resort to elementary school insults and avoid addressing any issues raised do so because of a lack of either a logical, factual or intelligent opinion to express, or the means to express it. I have all the time in the world for those who have intelligent opinions but find expression difficult, as many here, especially non English speakers, can attest. I have no time for those who ignore any and all facts that might make their statements inaccurate, and resort to pointless juvenile adjectives to deflect attention away from their inability to accept that they might be wrong.

VWM wasn't offended by my post. I asked him if he had legal experience....for all I know he used to be a lawyer, or a paralegal or something.....I don't know because it was the first time I asked. He replied, and all was good. I said nothing about the value of his opinion, unlike yourself about mine. :rolleyes:

The fact that you dug up a 3 month old thread just to insult me is indicative of a personal agenda. If it is, its pretty sad IMO.
 
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The OP has admitted to some pretty questionable behaviour in another thread, including using his own casino client to place bets that are not available.

While I agree it's pretty bad to have MB return funds to a merchant, Betfair may have it's reasons to have asked MB for a return of payment.
 
Given what the OP admitted to doing elsewhere, Betfair (for once;) )was probably the victim of some pretty clever "cracking". What has made them, and Skrill, look bad is the extra-judicial means that were used to deal with the dispute. It is rather like buying something from a shop that (in your opinion) is faulty, and snatching your money back out of their tills (or invoking a "chargeback" of a card payment) rather than raising a dispute through the proper channels. When PLAYERS resort to such methods to resolve their dispute, the casinos tend to scream "fraud", insisting that the player should have used the proper channels to raise their concerns (casino, PAB, regulator, and finally the courts). The industry is NOT setting a good example by REPEATEDLY snatching disputed winnings from players' ewallet, and even bank, accounts before the player has the slightest idea that a dispute even exists. In the original "happy hour", the somewhat toothless UK ASA ruled that Betfair "had not administered the promotion fairly". Their rather weak sanction was a formal "don't do it again", rather than anything meaningfull such as a fine or UK media advertising ban.

Whilst the OP probably deserved what happened, the majority of players did not, and had broken nothing more than the "spirit of the bonus", a vague concept that has no place in an accredited casino, hence Betfair's fast track entry into the rogue pit.

Markus only got both busted and "outed" when he tackled Viaden software with his "crack", and found the rep willing to share with us what he had been up to in considerable detail. He was backed into a corner, and had to admit to programming a "cracked" third party client capable of doing similar "trickery" with a number of softwares, not just Viaden. It turned out to be way beyond what I had him down as, which was a clever "advantage player" with a good level of mathematical abilty, coupled with incompetent decision making processes in casino marketing departments that lead to +EV promotions being let loose into the field.
 

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