The Importance of a Casino Blacklist
Gambling online can be a fun and enjoyable experience, only if you exercise proper caution and practice safe gambling. We all want to find trustworthy and safe gambling sites, but it’s often harder than it looks –– there are hundreds and thousands of online casinos out there, each one full of empty promises and eager to take your deposits. However, not every casino has your best interests in mind; they’re not keen to follow their terms and conditions, to provide you with fair games, or to properly pay their affiliates. You’d ideally want to avoid these casinos, but unfortunately, these rouge casinos are rampant and extremely hard to detect.
Hence, you must learn how to differentiate between the rogue and legitimate casinos –– which ones you should join, and which ones you should run for the hills. We’ve compiled a blacklist full of rogue casinos, all backed up by real-time customer complaints and firsthand experiences. With this in mind, we hope that it can help players avoid falling victim to their traps.
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Characteristics of Rogue Casinos
One common misconception is that there’s a universal blacklist that’s used commonly. Unfortunately, you’re not going to find the same casinos on every blacklist you see online. Though this would undoubtedly be incredibly handy, each website compiles its list using its resources, experiences, biases, and research.
Unfair Games
The common baseline for online casinos is to provide players with fair games, at random. However, a rogue casino would rip players off their games, or alter the games to give themselves the advantage. Rogue casinos commonly change their free practice games ever-so-slightly to be advantageous to players, to encourage them to switch towards the ‘unfair’ paid games.
Not Paying Their Players
The next telltale sign is when rogue casinos do not pay their players their winnings. Though there are legitimate reasons for players to not get paid –– such as cheating, abusing, or not meeting the terms of the bonus offer –– but rogue casinos would use these as excuses, or wrongfully accuse the player, even if they do not have evidence of player misconduct. This is done to bore or stall the player into playing or taking another bonus so that they won’t be able to cash out.
Moreover, this non-payment can apply to the casino’s affiliate partners, such as marketing partners and vendors. For example, rogue casinos often tweak their terms and conditions to avoid paying third-party affiliates for previous campaigns to cut costs.
Slow Payments
Similar to not paying their customers, a rogue casino would often delay payments by weeks, months, and even years, just to avoid paying their players. Such behavior often occurs when the casino either does not have the appropriate cash flow or simply does not want to enable the player to continue playing or take an additional bonus.
However, not all late payments make casinos 100 percent illegitimate – it is the frequency of delayed payments, the number of players getting bounced checks, and the runaround, that set off warning bells.
Outrageous Terms
If you happen to chance upon casinos with ridiculous terms –– such as 50x or 100x bonus rollover, a winning cap on bonuses, limiting spending per round, or prohibiting playing games whilst using the bonus – you should recognize that they are predatory, and avoid engaging with them at all costs.
Another major red flag is when the casino tries to encourage a player to sign up for a bonus or promotion, whilst resolving a conflict where the player tries to cash out. These are all shady tactics used by casinos to lock players into an offer, forcing them to play and lose more money, instead of allowing them to cash out.
Changing Terms
Another characteristic of rogue casinos is to constantly change their terms on the fly, or on an as when or needed basis. Casinos would usually do these whilst in the middle of a player dispute or accusation, to support their argument and prove that the player’s in the wrong.
Inducing Spam
Excessively spamming players, forums, or websites with notifications and promotions can be extremely annoying and shady.
Licensing and Regulation Lax
Rogue casinos would often have false or lax licensing and regulations, which allows them to get away with their illegal activities. This is detrimental for players as such casinos either do not have or possess an extremely weak support system. Players can spot this by checking the location of the casino, as the placing determines the degree of strictness for these casinos’ licensing and regulations.
Players can conduct their detective work to judge the trustworthiness of a casino. A quick online search on the casino’s license, auditing agency, and prevalence of predatory terms are usually sufficient in determining whether the casino is worth trying. Moreover, players can go the extra mile with a quick Google, Watchdog site, and forum checks to find out firsthand knowledge and customer reviews about the casino.
How to Spot Rogue Casinos In The Making
Unfortunately, a blacklist is not exhaustive, and there are many rogue casinos out there running rampant. To protect yourself, look out for these red-flags and avoid the casinos that possess them. Some of these characteristics –– such as slow pays, affiliate no pays, and licensing laxes –– are similar to the aforementioned ones. The only two that are different are the ones listed below:
Giving Players ‘Too Good’ Offers
If a casino offers you ridiculously huge bonuses, it’s probably going to be too good to be true. Bonuses are usually from $5,000 to $10,000 –– no legitimate casino would provide you with $5,000 or $10,000 bonuses!
Not Having Separate Accounts for Player Funds
Casinos who do not have separate accounts for player funds should be a massive red flag that they have a dangerously unstable cash flow. for you to observe. In other words, they should not be paying their bills or other players, with your winnings.
Our Casino Blacklist
We’d like to address two pressing questions that customers often ask us. Firstly, casinos can get off the blacklist, if they exhibit proper behavior over an extended period; this may include paying customers back or conducting public apologies. Secondly, having one bad casino does not mean that all casinos are bad.
Most, if not all of the casinos mentioned below are guilty of voiding player winnings, having slow/stalled or non-payments to affiliates and players, and ignoring player requests. These casinos commonly accused their player over minor terms and conditions infractions or changed their regulations last minute to side with the company over the player. These include Curgam Group, Cyberrock Entertainment, Gambling Federation (CGTV Games), iButler Casino, Isagro Holdings, Lock Casino, Lucky 18, Netad Management, Rand Logic Gaming Casinos, Revenue Jet, Sunny Group, Teller Processing, Topgame Casino, and more.
Plus, casinos such as Affpower, Curgam Group, Betvoyager, iButler Casinos, Sorila Commercial Casinos, are guilty of spamming customers, reviewing websites, and casino websites with advertisements and malware. Casinos who conducted fraud and hacking include Operia Costa Rica, Wager21, Playtech, and Netad Management Casinos. These casinos had predatory terms to intentionally deceive players into playing more, or limiting their payouts so they could not cash out. Some of these operators were arrested for fraud, but most of them remain open. Lastly, companies Rendered Inoperable and Casino 1×2 remain open or have already opened a new casino, without addressing their previous issues.
Casinos with Fake Games
We’ve observed a rise in unlicensed casinos offering fake games pirated from legitimate software companies such as Playtech. These casinos, such as 1bet2bet, 77Jackpot, Casino4live, Otobet, CasinoGirl, are reported to only accept bitcoin and cater exclusively to the Russian markets.
Conclusion
Just because a casino isn’t on this current blacklist, it doesn’t make it 100 percent safe to use. Be sure to take note of these red flags, and make sure to protect yourself from potential online scams. Do remember that a safe gambler is a happy gambler!