MyStake Casino - Player’s attempts to self-exclude himself have been overlooked.

Where do I begin. All started in October 22 where I played from the UK on this site. I have an active exclusion from all UK gambling sites and blocks on my bank etc. Anyway, to my surprise, I was able to sign up and play here. Had two accounts and due to gambling issues I self excluded. I then excluded with the CEG formally as per the required process. This is where it gets mad. Following this, due to the ridiculously easy sign up process, I was able to create a further 28 gaming accounts by simply using different email addresses. My issue is a severe one, but even then that is something else. 10 of them used the same Credit card, 5 the same bank to transfer, the rest all used cryptocurrency from the same place. There have been zero checks or anything else performed before depositing on each account and no bans etc. Same name etc all used on each. The facts are you only require a name, country and email address to sign up which is astonishing. From there you can then deposit til your hearts content. Of each of the 28 accounts there was zero chance of winning or withdrawing funds as they would have tried to verify and say I was excluded by them. I have raised this issue multiple times with the Casino and each time they never really go into it. I even contacted gaming providers who are more responsive than them. I just think this company are rogue...they are accepting money in any form without consequence. The CEG are just shambolic and will not take action so this is my last hope for someone to see sense and put an end to this and get them to at least fix their sign up process to prevent access. As a clinically certified pathological gambler this isn't what I need. I have taken all steps in the UK to stop but this company can bypass by not showing gambling payments to banks as gambling.

Dear ayrshirecsc,

Thank you very much for submitting your complaint. I’m sorry to hear about your problem. Could you please forward all the emails or screenshots showing that you have sent requests for the account closure? My email address is petronela.k@casino.guru. Did you specify in those requests for how long you wish your account to be closed and clearly stated the reason why?

I hope we will be able to help you to resolve this issue as soon as possible. Thank you in advance for your reply.

Best regards,

Petronela

I assume these files will be confidential as I don't want my email address or real name public here.

Of course, they will remain hidden to any third parties.

Dear ayrshirecsc,

We are extending the timer by 7 days. Please, be aware that in case you fail to respond in the given time frame or don’t require any further assistance, we will reject the complaint.

Hi,

I have requested a copy of the agreement from both CEG and Mystake.com as it appears to be missing from my emails. I am awaiting a formal response.

The attached email was sent to CEG, Mystake and numerous operators in relation to this issue. I have posted the response from Push Gaming and the UKGC to this(UKGC cannot help). The operator and CEG have failed to respond. The chances of CEG looking into the issue are remote given their lack of responses.

Thank you very much, ayrshirecsc, for your replies. Do I understand correctly that you used, not only different email addresses but also different and fake credentials every time you registered a new account?

Have you submitted any personal documents to verify any of those casino accounts?

No, I used the same name, country and Date of Birth. The sign up is utterly ridiculous. The above and the email address is all you need to enter and then you are in and able to deposit. The only fully verified account was the first one I created with them. I was never asked to verify any of the others and in fact would only have been told to do so if I had a withdrawal. However, I would never have been able to withdraw anything from them.

Sorry, not even date of birth. They simply allow anyone to go on and deposit with them. All you need is name and email address!

Thank you very much, ayrshirecsc, for providing all the necessary information. I will now transfer your complaint to my colleague Jozef (jozef.k@casino.guru) who will be at your assistance. I wish you best of luck and hope to see your problem being resolved to your satisfaction in the near future.  

Dear ayrshirecsc,

I absolutely appreciate that you shared your experiences with the Casino Guru team. We will now try to get in touch with the casino.

Hello ayrshirecsc,

We are sorry to hear that you are addicted to gambling. Why did you make so many multiple accounts? You have only one verified account - JDRCELTIC where you already withdrew more than you deposited. 

As you know only one account is allowed per person, household or IP address. Creating multiple Player Accounts by a single Player can lead to the termination of all such Accounts. 

Quite the opposite of our terms, you made multiple accounts one by one, where you only made one or two deposits for activating the welcome bonuses. You even have not tried the verification of any of them. Please be informed that our system automatically detects a duplicate account when a user attempts account verification.

Your actions indicate bonus hunting. Bonus hunting can't be justified by gambling addiction.  

Best regards,

MyStake Team

Hi,

With all due respect you appear to believe that this is the first time you have heard that I have a serious gambling addiction. If you read back on the 60 emails sent between October and February from me to you, CEG, UKGC etc you will know it is clear from the very beginning that there was a severe addiction.

As we have been over many times on email - how could you not detect and stop any duplicate accounts? Also, you are aware that a self exclusion was entered into on the initial accounts. Your sign up is incredible....a child could bypass it. Name, Country, Email. That is all that is required to be able to play on your site and deposit because there are NO CHECKS of any kind until, as stipulated multiple times, withdrawals.

If you note on the first account I did win and subsequently excluded the account. However, my addiction again brought me back to the table and you didn't detect any duplicates because I openly copied emails between the excluded account detail and new email address to send to you. I asked CEG to enact exclusion thinking this would prevent me from playing. The real story is that your signup process is very easy to go through and deposit. I deposited on 28 odd accounts with no chance of ever withdrawing funds - that is pathological gambling addiction - and was only stopped after cancelling all my credit cards, blocking my debit card and restricting my Revolut bank account. Mystake did nothing to prevent me from playing. You know that the same names were used. In fact, the exact same Paydo 3rd party email was entered on most of the accounts to accept payment so you would have again been aware that the excluded email address was still being used prominently.

The lack of legitimate response when I copied in CEG Push Gaming and the UKGC tells its own story.

The case is clear - I consistently advised that I had a severe addiction to gambling and pleaded with you to change the signup process or at least ask for verification before deposit...this was completely ignored. Not to mention emails sent to the excluded account offering bonuses multiple times following the exclusion.

This episode has essentially left me in severe debt and as I stated previously, if it cannot be resolved amicably then I 100% will be taking legal action. I have already sourced a Curaçao lawyer who confirms the case is strong. It is sad really as this situation could have been sorted out months ago had Mystake listened but you chose to ignore.

Plus if you want proof of my gambling addiction I am quite happy to provide that offline, it is well documented!

You also need to remember I am completely excluded from gambling legitimately. I am on Gamstop in the UK and had gambling blocks on my debit card. Credit cards cannot be used for gambling either. Yet due to a complex payments process payments to Mystake are marked as Non-Gambling and thus bypass the blocks. I had not gambled for 2 years..was in remission and this site being advertised brought the addiction back with a bang. One attempted withdrawal in 4 months over 29 accounts testifies to that. You would absolutely not have paid out anything to me on any one of those accounts so really it was free money for you.

Dear ayrshirecsc,

do you I understand correctly that you have reached licensing authority of the casino?

No, I have not reached the licensing authority other than requesting the self exclusion and copying them in on one of the main emails. They will not get involved in this dispute. The UKGC were copied in as it is their responsibility to engage with ISPs and law to ask for delisting as the French Government have done 2 days ago.

The dispute is very much between me and Mystake with anyone else involved an interested third party.

Obviously the attached is highly confidential but may give some oversight as to the severity of the addiction and explanation of actions in opening multiple accounts. I took all steps in the UK to block myself, everything possible. Mystake provided an opportunity to bypass that because transactions are masked as non-gambling. I did accept bonuses on multiple accounts but only so I had more to play with. The fact that it was so easy to open 29 further accounts after an exclusion is the issue here. I now owe over 2000 on my credit card due to this issue solely. It has enforced my original position of trying to beat this addiction and that was working until the likes of Mystake advertise specifically for problem Gamblers. They then take no responsibility for stopping these problem Gamblers. They don't have any real checks on who is playing with them. As said before, this issue has cost me around 5000 GBP. Mystake is the ONLY company that provides legitimate games to UK players without a licence...which is also actually deemed illegal by the UKGC. Because this is out in the open now I have moved on and will beat the addiction but I can't understand the unethical behaviour of Mystake and will not stop until they fix this.

Dear MyStake casino team,

after longer evaluation we made a conclusion, and I am sure it will not surprise you because we already had similar case with your brand. We consider your protection of problem gamblers as insufficient. 

I fully understand that player with creating another accounts breached the T&Cs. But, we are not talking here about a player who is trying to do any fraud or gain an advantage over your system. This is a person who obviously cannot control his actions and asks for help. 

There are multiple options for how you can prevent this situation. The easiest one is blocking the player's account after registration if the key credentials are the same as other accounts. Then it is for you to find out if it is an addicted gambler previously excluded, an attempt for duplicate account, or a completely different person. This option is an acceptable minimum and has even additional benefits. I have come across many Curacao licensed brands that protect problem gamblers at quite a high level and if you have any questions about this feel free to reach me. I would love to see this improved to avoid future similar cases.

jozef.k@casino.guru

In this particular case, we believe the player deserves at least partial compensation. May I kindly ask you to reevaluate your position, or is it final? 

Hello Jozef,

We are still in the process of investigating all of the accounts that this user has created. Thus we should study all the personal data used by the player to compare each detail and as soon as that investigation has been completed we will get back to you with the appropriate response.

Kind regards,

Mystake Team

I'm going to make a suggestion to Mystake. Also look at payment methods. See if someone excludes/has account blocked...just ban whatever payment details they previously used. This means if they try and open further accounts and use the same payment details pthen they won't get very far. I have never known one single casino(I have played on literally hundreds) not to have this mechanism in place.

Similarly for address and date of birth - this should surely be a must on registration? I mean, how from name, country and email can you possibly verify that someone is old enough to play?

If you have this then someone doesn't just need to stick a name in and they are depositing money. Its all very well doing checks on withdrawal but it results in the situation we have here. These are simple ways to stop this occurring in the future.

I am extending the timer by 7 days, so the casino team has enough time for investigation. Please, let me know if it is not enough.

Hello ayrshirecsc,

Please provide us with the usernames for all 28 accounts so we can investigate the last step of this issue.

Kind regards,

Myateke

Hi Mystake team,

I should be able to recover some of the names but not all. I should though be able to provide applicable email addresses if this will be enough? Time has passed and cookies, usernames etc have been removed so its not as simple as having everything to hand. On prior email comms a list of emails had been provided.

I'll do some digging and come back with as full a list as I can.

Thanks

J

I am extending the timer by 7 days, so the casino team has enough time to investigate further information.

Example - Neosurf. Here is a list that Paydo provided to me.

Rather than waste more time going through all of these transactions again, which come to over 4k. I am willing to accept final settlement of 2000 Euros. This will at least partially soften the issue with the credit card and we can all move on. Please advise.

Hi Mystake Team and Jozef.

I am sure you both agree that this has dragged on for too long. I have now had a chance to add up all deposits made.

1496.78 Neosurf

550 Bank Transfer

650 Debit Card

1350 Crytpo

300 Credit Card

Totals over 4346.78 GBP, almost 5000 Euros.

A payment of 2000 Euros still sees significant profits even if they are dubious. Can this just be settled at that and we can all move on? Note, I am moving to the Middle East permanently soon and hope to have this tied up by then so I can close my UK accounts. Please advise.

Here are my details @Mystake. Ball in your court now.

Dear ayrshirecsc,

may I kindly ask you to confirm that although the usernames and registration emails were different, the rest information used for registration was always the same?

Dear ayrshirecsc and MyStake Casino team,

Thank you very much for your patience during the resolution.

Since the key protection for self-excluded players is missing, I can confirm that the self-exclusion process in the My Stake Casino is not complete. The casino team is clearly aware of this issue from past cases, but no action was done on their part.

On the other side, the player was also clearly aware of the error and created way many accounts. Of course, he could not control himself. But there are multiple steps he could take to prevent at least losing the deposits with MyStake.  

Concluding the information above, we consider the offer from the casino as sufficient.

ayrshirecsc, you have a full right not to agree with our decision. There is another option, you can reach their licensing authority, although I am afraid their opinion would be the same. Please, could you specify your next step? Are you going to accept it or reach the authority?

I do highly recommend you seek help in this matter. Your behaviour has clear signs of a high level of compulsive gambling disorder, and not taking care of it may danger your life quality. You can find many useful tips, here. Additionally, if you need any personal guidance like advising the tools or any other questions I will gladly help, and you can reach me anytime at my email address.

I want this to end so to put it to bed I accept the offer and need the casino to transfer the funds ASAP to the account I have provided them with.

I have rejoined gambling help groups and blocked all access to these type of sites. I am also moving somewhere where it is forbidden to gamble.

Mystake, please confirm when funds are transferred. Thank you Josef for your help.

Dear MyStake Casino team,

May I kindly ask you to proceed?

Hi Mystake team,

I tried to login to that account but it says User Blocked. Please can you resolve and then I can start the withdrawal.

I dropped your support@mystake.com an email on this as well, just FYI.

Thanks

J

I have now been able to successfully make the withdrawal and it is now sitting as "processing".

I can confirm funds have been received. @Josef, please mark this dispute as complete. Would be greatful if all the sensitive information etc is removed from this.

Dear ayrshirecsc,

Thank you for using the Casino Guru complaint resolution center. We are glad to know that your problem has been resolved. I will now mark it as 'resolved' in our system and remove sensitive information as you wished. If you encounter any difficulties with this or any other casino in the future, please do not hesitate to contact us. Our team is always available to assist you, but we hope you won't encounter a similar problem in the future.

Best regards, Jozef