Is this legal what Partypoker is doing?

andynbg · Jun 12, 2007

Player A owes Player B 4k. Player A has that money in his poker account and asks Player B to create an account there. Player B deposits some small ammount there for having an active account. Now they start playing at some real money table and they decide to play h2h. Player A starts losing (intentional). Whenever some other players joins the table they immediately leave and look for another room. That goes on until Player A loses the ammount mentioned above. Once again: No other player was involved. Player B now has the money in his account. He decides to cash out 1k and leave the rest of the money in his account. Now Partypoker closes his account and the account of Player A. On request Partypoker says they are not a bank and Player A intentional lost the money. Partypoker the confiscated the whole balance of Player B and both account remain closed. First the operator accused both players of playing from the same network and being the same person. When Player B asked for proof and wanted them to check the IPS the operator said that it was not the same network but that does not matter because they are not a bank. Management made the decision to close the account and confiscate the 4k.

My question now is: Is that legal? I mean no other player was hurt. The max. interaccount transfer would have been 1k. What is the problem that Player A paid off his depth in that way? Partypoker even made some money from the plays and most of the money stayed with them. Some posters will jump on me now but that was neither money laundering nor stealing money from any not in that procedure involved player. I feel like Partypoker is stealing the money now.

Btw: Partypoker asked for picture IDs of both players and they had been sent. Partypoker still says the account reamain closed. I just found out that they are based in Gibraltar now. Does it make sence to ask for legal acion against them (I am European)? I still don`t get the problem they had with these action.

:nono5:

andynbg · Jun 12, 2007

That was their final answer:

Thank you for contacting us.

Please note that the decision to close down your account permanently
has
been taken by our management, considering the gameplay we observed and
the status of the accounts linked to yours. The intentional transfer of
funds over our tables is a violation of our Terms & Conditions, and
hence we have had no other choice but to take this decision.

I can`t find that anywhere in their terms. This had nothing to do with damaging Partypoker or any other not involved player. Even no bonus was involved.

The Group has a zero tolerance policy towards inappropriate play and fraudulent activity. If, in the Group's sole determination, you are found to have cheated or attempted to defraud the Group or any other user of any of the Services in any way, including but not limited to game manipulation or payment fraud, or manipulation of the multi-currency facilities, or if the Group suspects you of fraudulent payment, including use of stolen credit cards, or any other fraudulent activity (including but not limited to any chargeback or other reversal of a payment) or prohibited transaction (including but not limited to money laundering), the Group reserves the right to suspend and/or close your Account and to share this information (together with your identity) with other online gaming sites, banks, credit card companies, and other such appropriate agencies. Please see our Privacy Policy for further details.

We reserve the right to void and withhold any or all winnings made by any person or group of persons where we have reasonable grounds to believe that said person or group of persons is acting or has acted in liaison in an attempt to defraud or damage Group and/or the Services and/or the Platforms in any way.

In the interests of data protection, security and avoidance of fraud the Group does not permit use of any communication channels included within the Services and/or the Platforms (including but not limited to dealer table chat boards) to offer or promote any offers, products and services (whether yours or a third party's). You are expressly prohibited from posting information or contacting our customers to offer or promote any offers, products or services.

wolfie_cr · Jun 12, 2007

the problem is something like this

player A deposits, partypoker shallows some fees for taking it , then they are used/abused by these two players as a 'peer to peer' money transfer method

finally player B, cashes out and they have to deal with the request

so their deposit method was used, infraestructure (servers,software,bandwidth etc), accountants to process the request, fraud analyst looking at the situation and finally they send a payment

in the end , player A might try a chargeback and then partypoker is REALLY screwed

andynbg · Jun 12, 2007

I fully understand that but the payment method which was used is a German payment provider who directly gets the money out of the bank account of Player A. Therefore a chargeback is not possible. However besides of a 1k cashout Player B decided to leave the rest of the money in his account. Neither player used any bonus code when they made their initial deposits. No CC was used. Player A used the payment provider and Player B paid in by a prepaid card.

wolfie_cr · Jun 12, 2007

I am not familiar with the specifics of german banking legislation so I cant say anything 'decisive'

However

a) partypoker gets charged fees for the processing of the deposit and most certainly the payment of the cashout

and most importantly........

b) chargebacks are possible even with EFT methods (At least I know it was possible in the US to do this before the UIGEA), I find it hard to believe that a german customer can't go to the bank and say "hey someone stole money from my account , get it back!!!!!", the only method where you absolutely cant chargeback is WU/similar when the other end already got the money locked in the vault

crunch99 · Jun 12, 2007

That's one of the risks of online gambling, it's self-regulated. You can win $20,000 but if they don't want to pay, they don't have to and you have no recourse..... other than to badmouth them and hopefully ruin their rep.

PO69 · Jun 12, 2007

AL Poker rooms would do the exact same thing. They dont allow players to send money like that.

The best way to do is try it in 2 or 3 hands. Play in a $1000 game and have one guy raise to 900 and the other gy goes all in for $1000 and the first guy folds. Do this for 4 or 5 hands and you have your cash and that might slip through the audits.

MANY, MANY, MANY players in the past have done the EXACT same thing above and player A charges back his deposit. The pokerrooms have been burned on numerous occassions in the past and try and keep away from it in the future

andynbg · Jun 12, 2007

I emailed the guy (Person A) and he said his initital deposit was 150 EURO. He run up his account to around 4k and then paid off his depth in the way descriped. That is a no brainer. Why would someone run up his balance and then charge back? I will see a lawyer tomorrow if they still refuse to pay. Partypoker is somehow active here in Germany and I will do everything I can to get my money.
How about that: I will open up a store at a supermarket. In case someone does not have the coins for his shopping cart and buys some cheap stuff to get some change I will confiscate his money because he just had the intention to get some change. What a joke this company is !!!!

crunch99 · Jun 12, 2007

They have a policy against it.... you guys tried to cheat them and they caught you.... you have no case.

wolfie_cr · Jun 12, 2007

ok I see it better now

player A deposits 150 EUR

balances goes up to 4k!!!!!!!!!

THEN player A starts losing intentionally to player b.......some small/unspecified amount

can we all see now why from 150 to 4k then to intentional losing would trigger any and all fraud alarms on partypoker fraud department?

while that is not an unique/unheard of situation is certainly something that attracts attention and manual review by analysts.....then they look at their terms and conditions clearly spelled out..........and well the rest is history

since we are all watchers (player 'a' and 'b' are not here) it also comes into question if player 'a' got more from other people who also owed him money............

and well, the heart of the matter is that they are a gaming company not a payment company, if they would allow everyone to do this....complexity of fraud analysis would go up and so would processing costs

was player 'a' deliberately trying to do something bad......probably not, he was doing something stupid maybe and dealing with a big/faceless company here is certainly not helping either

andynbg · Jun 12, 2007

Now even I got it - lol. So I can say good-bye to the money and ask him to send me the money by any other means. I just hope he has enough money. Bad enough I accepted what he offered me to do. Are there really people out there charging back just 150??? Strange.

Another thing: Do they still run commercials in the USA? They do it here in Germany. Poker is called a play of chances and therefore it is strictly forbidden by our law. They are always offering playmoney games for attracting people to play real money games (which they don`t mention in their commercials). On one hand our government is fighting online gambling but on the other they allow such commercials. Is it the same in the USA?

buddyboy · Jun 12, 2007

reminds me of the time we were buy a large amount of dope with counterfeit money. all of it wasn't bogus bills about 1/2 of it was.

anyway, after the deal goes down, the guys show back up a few days later and wanted the dope back... well they took it and kept all the money, both real and fake.

was that legal?

Santo · Jun 12, 2007

Buddyboy: Not quite a fair example. Gambling isn't an illegal industry in Europe. If it were Americans involved your example may stand.

buddyboy · Jun 12, 2007

oh then why didn't player A take out $4000 and give it to player B?

that way player B would not have had to even open up an account and they would have saved $$$ on the rake.

the only reason someone would ever try this would be to launder money... sounds fishy to me.

If it smells like shit, don't have to taste it to verify.

Santo · Jun 12, 2007

Yes it wasn't a smart move, but the act of playing poker is still not illegal, the method of money transfer may well fall foul of money laundering rules however.

andynbg · Jun 12, 2007

I understand your views but something I don`t get is the following fact:
Why should someone charge back when he runs up his balance from 150 to 4k? HE MADE 3850 plus. I would not do it.

wolfie_cr · Jun 12, 2007

crap you are player b! :lolBIG:

worst case is that your friend will try to discount his 150 EUR from the original loss, I say......try to collect your money (or even your money minus 150 EUR) ASAP!

Santo · Jun 12, 2007

He might not, but the problem is that we don't know how he made that 3850, if that came from chip dumping, then player C could charge back, and so on..

wolfie_cr · Jun 12, 2007

andynbg said:
I understand your views but something I don`t get is the following fact:
Why should someone charge back when he runs up his balance from 150 to 4k? HE MADE 3850 plus. I would not do it.

the kind of weird scam scenarios that the fraud departments see are quite varied and creative

like I saw in a movie, denying all sort of money transfering methods based on losing intentionally from player 'a' to 'b' is a good idea not only 'for what we can imagine..............but more for the reasons that we can't imagine yet'

they are playing it safe from a fraud point of view and as Santo properly stated........sticking to the extremely fine print of the law.....they might be running a 'money transfer like ' business in ways incompatible with their gaming license in Gib

btw and for mere illustration, back in the days when paypal dealt with US Gaming, this person won a 10k jackpot in the bingo site where I worked, very very good customer..........she had a pending EFT for 100 dollars......we said forget it......and process her payment......she got her 10k minus the 100 dollars that we THOUGHT we had ........sure enough the freaking transaction bounced and we never ever heard from her again........lesson....people do weird things

andynbg · Jun 12, 2007

As far as I know he made all the money at partybets. he has not played at partypoker before - maybe a few hands but that is it. He is pretty weak in poker. I have no clue why he played at partybets. Their odds are pretty bad. Sometimes they offer decent lines on exotic soccer matches but that`s it. I am pretty sure he had nothing to do with chip dumping. I will tell him to pay me the ammount over some period of time (personally) minus 150. It was not just his fault. I accepted it and so I am responsible for it too.