My worry is that I will be caught up in something like this myself by mistake, and I will be told that I can't be told what I did that was wrong. Doesn't that worry people?
There is a fundamental difference between being told what you did wrong in general and having the proof that was discovered in the course of an investigation presented to you for your perusal. In this particular case the OP has been told over and over what he did wrong, by the casino and by us, so there's no confusion as to what the problem is.
What has not happened is that the evidence used to arrive at this conclusion has not been presented to the OP, nor the membership here, and
it never will be.
Those of you who say "innocent until proven guilty" and "we've seen no proof!" are seriously barking up the wrong tree. As far as we, Casinomeister staff, are concerned the OP has been proven guilty based on reliable and sufficient evidence. Since
we are the ones to which such evidence is given
we are the ones that need to make the "proven guilty" decision and we clearly have.
So far the only thing this guy has been proved of doing wrong ...
Of course what's really being said is that we haven't shared the evidence with the public in order to convince the membership that the OP was guilty as charged. In other words you're saying
the OP isn't guilty until you are convinced of it.
Therein lies the confusion because the PAB process is not a public process, is not open to the membership for their viewing pleasure, and does not depend on the membership's opinion to arrive at its conclusions.
I'll say it again: the PAB process is a private exchange between the complainant, the casino, and us. It is not a public process and the membership should not expect to be given access to anything that is discovered or revealed during the course of the PAB process.
Those of you that know or have taken the time to understand how the PAB process works know that this "closed book" policy is essential to the working, and I would say the success, of the PAB process.
Those of you that are drumming away at changing the process to make it more of a public affair are missing the fundamental point: if the PAB process details were made public in any way most casinos would immediately withdraw from the process and thereby kill it stone dead in a heartbeat.
Casino participation in the PAB process is essential, without it there is no PAB process. If the casinos can't trust us to keep their internal stuff out of the public eye they simply will not share it with us, and that would cut the PAB process off at the knees.
....lets ask Max for a figure of how many PAB's have been declined due to fraud etc in that time. I'll bet the % of 'we got it wrongs' is miniscule.
I haven't crunched the numbers but yes, 'minuscule' would be an appropriate description. FWIW you can roughly calculate this stuff for yourselves by reviewing the PAB Archives.
... the OP stated that he won fair and square using his own money. IF true...
We've seen this argument here a few times and it basically boils down to the following, if I may paraphrase:
no matter what fraud you may have committed in order to get to that point once you're in and are playing with your own money then whatever you win should be yours.
Interesting idea and completely unsupportable in practice. The lies someone tells and the fraud one commits in order to gain access to the casino is very much relevant to their being there in the first place.
The casino's position on this generally goes something like this: if you've violated the Terms and presented yourself under false pretenses then you shouldn't be in the casino in the first place, hence your winnings are forfeit.
Ofter having worked with casinos and fraudsters for almost two years now what I have realized is that to do otherwise, to not confiscate the winnings of fraudsters, would be to reward them for being sneaky buggers. And that will have one direct and obvious result: breeding more fraudsters. Cheats do what they do because it pays. If you continue to fork out the cash they'll keep showing up and in increasing numbers.
Casinos can't afford that, nor should they, so it ain't going to happen. Fraud is grounds for confiscation of winnings, and so it should be.
Another aspect of this is that a few of you have speculated as to ways we might staunch the bleed of resources to fraudster cases like this one. The time and effort they cost us, etc. I respectfully suggest that the casinos are already doing the best possible thing they can to help us out with that: they are working hard to make it unattractive for fraudsters to risk their cash by confiscating it when they get caught.
As it happens in this case the deposits were returned to the player which lessens the bitter pill, and the lesson, but there you go I guess. At least they weren't rewarded for their efforts which is the main thing, IMHO.
I would have not banned the OP just yet, to see what he had to say in his defense after being "uncovered"....
Seriously K, I understand you're wanting to give the guy the benefit of the doubt but look at it from our perspective:
- the guy committed fraud at the casino. We've seen the evidence of it and are quite satisfied with that conclusion.
- the guy lied to us outright and indirectly in the process of the PAB.
- the guy used someone else's account to circumvent our banning system and post on the boards.
- the guy, and "friend", have done this all before and there's no reason to believe they won't do it again.
All of this and you're suggesting that they should still be given access to everything they've abused and pissed on in order to ... what, lie and abuse our services some more? I don't think so!
Folks the bottom line is that the PABer is a serial cheat and liar. We've got evidence of our own on this, we've got evidence from the casino on this, and this isn't the first time they've done it.
And yet
this is a person you're suggesting is worthy of your faith and trust and benefit of the doubt? Over and above what the evidence says? Over and above our evaluation of the case? Over and above their record of doing this sort of thing time and again? Really?
I seriously hope not because if that's how far things have sunk in terms of your belief in what we do and how we do it then I am very much beginning to feel like Bryan said earlier, "why do we bother?"
Finally, I've seen here and elsewhere people throwing about phrases like "dictatorship" and "totalitarian" and so forth in regards to the PAB service. Please note that we are not running your country or your judicial system, we're investigating and rendering judgment on disputes between online casinos and disgruntled players.
Would you want us to run your country the way we run the PAB process? Perhaps not, probably not. So I suggest that if we ever run for elected office in your country that you do not vote for us. But that's not the situation here and like it or not context in crucial. What is applicable to state policy and the philosophy of government is not applicable to our freebie complaint service. Context is crucial.
, for something that cannot and will not happen.
Let that sink in Pangloss.
