Rocketpot Casino - Player's winnings were confiscated.

I had been in touch with the Compliance Team and Live Chat Team regarding the holding of funds which i am owed.

I requested a withdrawal of $10'000 to my crypto account which i was then asked to provide KYC documents, which i supplied.

I was then advised that my account was terminated, and that no winnings could be withdrawn- only 116 USD from my previous deposit.

My account was terminated in line with the same terms and conditions that affiliates must follow according to Rocketpot's website, however UK based streamers don't seem to have any issue playing on the site.

I have been allowed to use the platform as i am currently working in Canada, so there has been no restriction on accessibility. 

The T&Cs are extremely contradictory and the company has done nothing to respect my good fortune.

After a few months of trying to get my money back i think it is now time to take this further to the gambling commission.

Dear jamesburtondrums,

Thank you very much for submitting your case. We are sorry to hear about your problem and understand your concerns. I checked the website and its terms and conditions.

I tried to access the website from the UK, with the following result:

However, using a VPN and registering on the website I wasn't prompted to enter any information regarding my country of residence. Could you please let me know if you were at any point asked to provide information regarding your country of residence either during registration or when depositing?

Do I understand correctly this account was used purely for gambling for personal use?

I'll await your reply.

Best regards,

Tomas

I was at no point required to divulge my country of residence upon account creation or when depositing funds as deposits were from crypto, this information was requested on withdrawal only.

The account was purely used for personal gambling activity only.

Kind Regards

i was sent this reply from Rocketpot, basically implying that UK based Streamers/Affiliates have special accounts however upon reading the Affiliate Terms and Conditions, there is a clause that states that Affilliates must follow the general terms and conditions, which concludes that they should still restricted from playing from the UK.

The enabling behaviour of allowing streamers to promote to UK audiences is incredibly careless and terrible practice.

Kind Regards

Hi can someone please respond to me?

I believe i have a very valid point from reading the affiliate terms and conditions and the general terms and conditions this casino is cherry picking who it wants to play their website for their own financial benefit.

It's wrong and they should not be allowed to do this, they should at least return my deposited funds.

I have submitted a complaint with the Curacao eGaming Licence office.

According to the Curaçao eGaming licence office Rockepot does not hold a Curaçao Licence.

Thanks for your patience, jamesburtondrums.

The casino is licensed by another Curacao license - Antillephone Curacao. As they are different regulatory bodies, only the Antillephone Curacao will be of any help if you decide to submit a dispute there.

Also, please note we are not dealing with affiliate issues, so we are interested only in terms&conditions relevant to players in the casino.

Lastly, We believe the casino shouldn't use the fact the player is from a restricted country to later void their winnings.

Thank you very much, for providing the necessary information. I will now transfer your complaint to my colleague Peter (peter.m@casino.guru) who will be at your service. I wish you the best of luck and hope the problem will be resolved to your satisfaction in the near future.  

Hi Peter, the complaint i have lodged is because of Rocketpot's contradictory terms and conditions which later blocked me from withdrawing my winnings.

Thank you

Also when checking the Rocketpot licence on the Antillephone Licencing website, it shows that Rocketpot is unlicensed.

Hi  jamesburtondrums,

I have looked at your case and understand the situation. Let me contact the casino and I will do my best to help. I would like to invite Rocketpot Casino to the conversation to participate in the resolution of this complaint.

Regarding the casino's license, you can find it here, the contact email is at the bottom of the website (https://validator.antillephone.com/validate?domain=rocketpot.io&seal_id=a115e0eaef92d7313e542ff0bbbd16663f5d898e5ef3488d062fd677a6a18fa54925cc08206a7b2185ccc50cfd3e4ec4&stamp=8a83349418e3b99c7e286986579e6fcb).

Hi Peter, i am led to believe that is a fake licence.

I have enquired with Curaçao eGaming who gave me the link for the correct validator, please find link below.

https://validator.antillephone.us/validate?domain=Www.rocketpot.io

The one you sent doesn't seem right. Have you tried to send an email to the email address from my link (certria@gaminglicences.com)?

No i haven't, i've sent so many emails out to so many places i'm getting annoyed, who are Certria?

I understand your frustration but this is the correct email address we use to contact the gaming authority.

I have emailed this company now, i hope they return to me with a response, could you also send them an email or shall i forward you the email i have sent them?

Hi, i have emailed Certria and had no response

Hi could someone please respond to me with any advice?

i have just been reading this from a similar complaint regarding the same treatment i have received.

I have still had no response from Certria or Rocketpot.

We would like to ask the casino to reply to this complaint. We are extending the timer by 7 days. If the casino fails to respond in the set time frame, we will close the complaint as ‘unresolved’ which may negatively affect its rating.

Still no response from Certria, could you please advise next steps.

Hi jamesburtondrums,

We are aware that the response from this gaming authority very often takes a while. There is practically nothing else that we can do right now except for waiting. We don't want to give you false hope because the casino has already quite a bad rating and it is possible that it won't respond at all. However, we always try to get in touch with every casino.

Hi jamesburtondrums,

I'm afraid it seems that the casino won't be replying. Have you received any response from the gaming authority?

No response from Certria or Rocketpot

Hi jamesburtondrums,

I have tried to contact the casino repeatedly but had no success. I'm afraid there is not much that can be achieved without cooperation from its side. I will mark the complaint as "unresolved" in our system. I understand this isn't a satisfactory solution to your issue. However, the decrease in the rating caused by unresolved complaints could help to change the casino's approach. If the casino decides to react, we will reopen the complaint and you will be notified by email. I can only recommend you choose casinos by their reviews and ratings in the future to avoid situations like this. Please let me know if you receive a response from the gaming authority (peter.m@casino.guru). I am sorry we could not be of more help on this occasion.

Best regards,

Peter

We’ve reopened this complaint at the request of Rocketpot Casino. We would like to allow this case one more chance to be resolved and help both parties involved to reach a satisfactory conclusion.

Hi, thank you for reopening,

I spoke to Rocketpot a month ago, and requested a solution where all my deposits are returned to me and they keep the remainder of the winnings, this was rejected initially but with the case being reopened, could we review this option?

Hi jamesburtondrums,

Let me ask you a question. Did you register on the website from Canada or did you use a VPN service? How long were you living in Canada when this happened?

I registered whilst working in Canada, I was working in Montreal then Toronto for 3 months, I used the VPN for security reasons whilst working away, I was never questioned during account creation for country of residence.

Hi jamesburtondrums,

I've just received a message from the casino stating that you couldn't provide any proof of working/living in Canada. So basically, if you can't prove that you worked in Canada and you used a VPN service, I'm afraid, I won't be able to help you. Casinos like Rocketpot, where you don't fill out the registration with all data right at the beginning have only limited tools to verify your localization. If you use a VPN service, the tools are practically useless.

Hi Peter, my employer holds all receipts and booking information for hotels and flights this includes insurance documents.

I have had this conversation with Rocketpot before. They should request that information on sign up as a responsible casino they should be checking this and not letting people spend 3-4k and then pulling the rug when a withdrawal is requested.

If they weren't going to pay me what I won whilst I was living temporarily in an unrestricted country then they should refund me all deposits made as a good will gesture and call this an obvious misunderstanding because it is clearly going nowhere.

Hi jamesburtondrums,

This doesn't sound like you were living long-term in Canada if you were staying in hotels. We had cases where the players had been living in an "allowed country" for 15 years and had problems with the casino because of their foreign citizenship. This doesn't seem to be the case.

Well would this not indicate that the KYC procedure works in a way to trap players? If you are unaware of creating an account in a foreign country that you are not permitted to play on the platform?

I sent an email to Rocketpot regarding the reopening of the case asking if we were going to come to a resolution and a member of staff has replied saying Yes and that their team are working on the case, I will wait to see what happens from here, could you please keep the case open for now.

Hi jamesburtondrums,

I don't think casinos have tools to discover traveling players who open their accounts unless there's a verification right at the beginning before you start playing. Let's see what the casino's statement will be.

Hi Peter,

I completely understand, but surely a casino that states it is VPN friendly should only allow people to set up an account by first selecting their place of residence to as part of the registration process.

That way if people were setting up accounts from restricted countries and trying to bypass the KYC checks by selecting an unrestricted country, they would be lying about their residence which would be an instant breach of the T&C's.

I have cooperated with Rocketpot and stated the facts through all my correspondence, giving nothing but the truth, such as when KYC docs were requested whilst I was in Canada.

I sent my UK passport and electronic banking statement, but notified them of where I was residing at the time of playing on the platform all this information and the email thread can be provided but I hope that Rocketpot are already taking this into consideration whilst they work on the case.

I believe certain situations require some leniency such as this one, its clearly a misunderstanding and I hope we can come to an agreement and put this situation behind us.

Hello Casino Guru team,

We detected that account was in violation of our terms & conditions, notably, point 3.1 - stating that players from the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland may not use Rocketpot.io.

Also, please see our following terms:

2.1.11.1. If you breach the restricted countries policy set out by clause 3 the casino can not guarantee the successful withdrawal of your deposit or any winnings.

4.1. In order to place any wagers on Rocketpot, you must confirm your eligibility and register to open an account.

https://rocketpot.io/terms/

Please be informed that it's the responsibility of the player to make sure whether or not they are breaching our the restricted countries policy as they agree to our T&C upon account registration.

As soon as we detected the player is based in UK, the user was informed via e-mail that the last deposit on the account was returned to him and the account was closed permanently.

Best regards,

The Rocketpot.io Team

Hi Rocketpot.

"4.1. In order to place any wagers on Rocketpot, you must confirm your eligibility and register to open an account."

If I was able to open an account and wager money, does that not confirm my eligibility to play on Rocketpot at that time?

It seems quite odd how when depositing monies the T&Cs are ignored yet when withdrawals are made you seem to use them to prevent players winnings being paid out.

"Please be informed that it's the responsibility of the player to make sure whether or not they are breaching our the restricted countries policy as they agree to our T&C upon account registration."

Upon account creation the only thing that I remember being asked was which method of payment I would like to use, there was no request for country of residence or notification that i was not permitted to access the site as i was playing from a permitted country.

I was even informed by Rocketpot staff via live chat that if I had not breached a certain KYC triggering withdrawal limit I would not have been detected, so it is clear that had I not triggered the limit i would have been OK to continue playing...

I find it strange how KYC didn't take place within the stated 2 week period of me playing on the site but instead waited for me to land a large withdrawal.

My argument with Rocketpot on the previous statement is if a player can freely access a gambling site and deposit freely with no requirement to state country of residence when creating account and deposits surely that makes them eligible to withdraw any winnings from that money or fully entitled to it being returned?

Surely if that's the case, upon finding the breach of clause 3 you would be responsible to return the player all their money if you cannot accept it?

In my understanding of your T&C's if you cannot accept players from the UK then that means you cannot accept UK deposits too?

Returning the last deposit is not enough, I had never withdrawn from my Rocketpot account up until that moment, all my transactions were deposits.

I would be happy to come to some form of arrangement to sort this out.

Hi all,

Thank you for your replies.

Dear Rocketpot Casino team,

Will jamesburtondrums get his deposits back?

Would be greatly appreciated if i could, i believe i should, returning the deposits will put the whole thing to bed, it's been going on for quite some time now all when it's clearly been a misunderstanding between both parties.

We would like to ask the casino to reply to this complaint. We are extending the timer by 7 days. If the casino fails to respond in the set time frame, we will close the complaint as ‘unresolved’ which may negatively affect its rating.

Have you had any contact from Rocketpot?

Hi  jamesburtondrums,

Unfortunately, I haven't heard from the casino. What was the sum of your deposits?

I don't have the exact transaction amounts because I cannot access my account but it was in the region of $3000-$4000.

Dear jamesburtondrums,

I'm afraid, we aren't making any progress here. It seems that the casino stopped responding. I’m afraid there is not much that can be achieved without cooperation from its side. I will mark the complaint as "unresolved" in our system once more and adjust the disputed amount. If the casino decides to react, we will reopen the complaint, and you will be notified by email. I wish I could have done more to help you.

Best regards,

Peter