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- Feb 14, 2007
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They Hunted Him: GamStop, Offshore Casinos, and the Death of Ollie Long
The Long family are facing another year without their eldest son. Ollie Long took his own life in 2024, aged 36, after eight years of gambling addiction, recovery attempts, and relapse. He had done everything right. He had signed up with GamStop. He had installed Gamban. He had worked for a charity helping other people with gambling problems.
None of it was enough, because the offshore casino industry had decided people like Ollie were worth targeting.
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It is worth reading in full. What follows is what it means in the context of what we see here every day. We also recently covered the follow-up Guardian investigation into the Santeda network itself — that article is here.
How the Trap Works
GamStop does what it says. Register, choose your exclusion period, and every UKGC-licensed operator must lock you out. More than half a million people have signed up. For many of them, it has been genuinely life-changing.
The problem is that "Not on GamStop" has become a search term, a product category, and a business model.
Affiliate websites have built entire operations around directing self-excluded players to offshore casinos that hold no UK licence and have no obligation to honour GamStop exclusions. The affiliates take a cut of every player they send through. The casinos take the deposits. The player, who registered with GamStop precisely because they knew they had a problem, has no protection whatsoever on the other side of that click.
Yield Sec, a data analytics firm that investigates offshore gambling, estimates that more than 84% of illegal gambling content in the UK stems from Not on GamStop search traffic. The illicit market grew from £122 million in UK takings in 2022 to £583 million last year.
Yield Sec's founder, Ismail Vali, put it plainly: "They came into the UK marketplace to make money from the most vulnerable at-risk communities. Gamblers were being hunted."
The Names in Ollie's Bank Statements
In his final month, Ollie made 55 transactions totalling around £5,000, sent to recipients with names like MadsWinterEU, MadsWinterCom and Wintermads.com. The trail leads to Santeda International, the Curaçao-registered operator behind Donbet, MyStake, Goldenbet and Velobet, among others.
A Casinomeister warning thread on Santeda has been running for some time. We also have dedicated threads for MyStake, Goldenbet, and Donbet. The complaints in those threads, unpaid withdrawals, ignored responsible gambling requests, and accounts closed without explanation, map directly onto what the Guardian investigation describes.
According to illicit market analysis firm GAMRS, the Santeda network takes £2 billion in bets from UK players annually.
What the Regulator Has Done
The Gambling Commission secured 214 website removals from search engines and social media in the fourth quarter of 2025 alone, and blocked 180 sites. The government has allocated £26 million over three years to assist with enforcement, a significant increase on the previous annual budget of £1.5 million for this work.
And yet, as of the Guardian's publication, the Santeda sites remained fully accessible from the UK.
Ismail Vali, who also serves as president of Gaming Compliance International, said the Commission had been "asleep at the wheel." He wants the platforms that carry Not on GamStop advertising, including Google and Facebook, held accountable for hosting it.
What Ollie's Family Said
His sister Chloe described the business model as "morally incomprehensible." She said the offshore network was "abusive and malicious, exploiting people at their most vulnerable for their own financial gain."
"Ollie's death has shattered our family," she said. "The government must act urgently to replace the current ineffective approach with an enforcement strategy genuinely committed to reducing the accessibility of black market sites and protecting those at risk. Anything less will cost more innocent lives."
The Bottom Line
Casinomeister has been documenting what these operators do to players for years. The complaints we receive are individual stories, and they matter on their own terms. What the Guardian's reporting adds is the scale: half a billion pounds a year, flowing from people who had already raised their hands and asked to be protected, to operators in Curaçao and other similar offshore jurisdictions who face no meaningful consequences.
If you have played at any Santeda brand and encountered problems, please share your experience in the relevant thread. These records matter.
