Potential BWIN.com Player Theft (Updated June 2012)

7 JUNE 2012 – We have upgraded BWIN to C+ on our rating guide as this more accurately reflects the risks users of their betting website face. We have no financial interest in this matter, and as always are providing our sincere opinion. The primary thought process here is: considering the source of this player complaint has not updated anyone, we’ll likely never know if this has been settled. BWIN does have some issues however and is probably best avoided. I’ll cover these at the end of the post, but for now to state: “players” don’t face the same risks with BWIN as they do with other C to D+ rated betting sites – hence the small rating adjustment.

Original Story

Sports Betting Sites initially downgraded Bwin.com to D+ after the staff of one of our competitors made a video alleging they stole €2432 from a punter. Normally we take news from so called “watchdog” sites with a grain a salt, but in this case we do trust the reporter. That reported is Justin7 whose real name is Elihu D. Feustel. He’s the author of the book Conquering Risk: Attacking Las Vegas and Wall Street that can be found for sale online at amazon.com. He’s an attorney, a professional sports bettor, and well before becoming a forum moderator Justin7 he was a member of betting forums and also worked as a prop line manager for popular Sportsbook Pinnacle Sports. I can’t recall ever following a complaint between a bettor and a sportsbook where I do not agree with or at least understand Justin7’s position. With this said the video is below and allow me to cover the news.

Details of Latest Bwin.com Scam

According to a “Are You Serious” YouTube Video Justin7 released on January 30, 2012: back on October 5, 2011 a sports bettor had their Bwin.com account locked. They wrote Bwin dozens of emails without getting a response and about a month and a half later found the company J7 works for and filed a complaint. It took over one month contacting BWIN to finally get a resolution. Now during this entire time (October 5 to December 29) the player was not told what the problem was with her account. For a month SBR was not told the problem with the account. Finally on December 29th the player was paid €11,000 Euros which was €2432 less than the balance she had. No explanation for why the payment was short was given.

Justin7 claims to have written them around a dozen times trying to find out what the problem was with the account and then the reason for shorting the payment €2432. Finally he was given the response: “This user’s account has been closed permanently as we have reason to believe she is part of a betting syndicate”. After much pressing they finally said their reason for believing this was that several accounts placed bets within a few minutes of each other and €2432 was the amount of winnings from these wagers.

SBS Opinion and Action

Okay forgetting Justin7’s comments for now, to give my own which are similar. There are many reasons users might post bets within a few minutes of each other. Example a tout (someone who sells picks) might release a play. News breaks on some media site about an injury, someone running hot on twitter makes a tweet, heck ESPN or the local news station might say something that leads to this. There are even Free Picks Sites, as well as countless other reasons.

However let’s just assume it was a betting syndicate, even though there is no evidence of this. Even if it was, the solution is NEVER to void a bet after the match took place or to hold someone’s account balance hostage. You can ban the user, you can void the bet before the match starts, you can cut the users limits on future bets, but under no subjective circumstances (previously banned, stolen credit card, being non-subjective) is it correct to wait for the game to finish and then void the bet after the fact. Would they be voiding the bet and returning the losses had the bet lost? Of course not, this is a freeroll against the player, keep the money if she loses and void the bet if she wins.

Back to Justin7’s comments, he ends his video claiming this classifies as a theft and he’s voting for the company he mods for to downgrade them (note: this never happened *$$$?*). It did get press however by my friend Steve who exposes BWIN Affiliate Program Scams, and also PokerAddict blogged about this potential BWIN theft as did Belosers.com.

In any case BWIN has long been subject to controversy. Some users have reported them opening markets early, and then voiding the line if their handicapper got it wrong, citing input error. There’s many quirky complaints like this often, and our advice is to use our Sportsbook Ratings to find a better alternative.