Scammed Now What

So you’ve been Scammed Now What?

Being cheated out of your money (or money that should’ve been yours once you withdrew it) is an incredibly frustrating. If you have been a victim of an online casino scam, there’s also a certain where-do-I-turn-now helplessness because there is little you can do about it. Notice I said “little” – there are some steps you can take to remedy the situation in some cases.

In others, it may be lost forever, but what follows is an outline of what you can do if your case is not hopeless. First, call your casino’s customer service line and make sure that this isn’t just some big misunderstanding. If the casino is legit, there is always the possibility that a glitch somehow affected your account and the situation may be able to be remedied. If they do not answer your questions or don’t even answer your call, be persistent.

Write e-mails, write letters, and continue calling and asking to speak to the highest possible person there. Raise as much hell as you possibly can muster, and don’t feel like you have to treat them nicely to get what you want. If you’ve been scammed, they won’t respond to you casually suggesting that you would like the money they stole from you back. Threaten to report them to the IB, to their local government, to every watchdog and reviews site on the web, to their local police – do anything.

This is most likely your best and only option to get all of your winnings and/or deposit back, so work hard and make yourself a nuisance. At a certain point, if they aren’t responding, you might have to abandon this measure, but at least you got to yell at a whole bunch of people. Remember: If you don’t have your money back after a few tries with their customer service line, you are dealing with thieves and con artists. Deal with them as such and whatever you do – do not hand over any information or give any authorization to them to further take advantage of you.

Unfortunately, there are few legal measures you can take against an offshore company if the sports book isn’t under any legal jurisdiction, and many scam sites will use this. If that is not the case, it will definitely be worth it to investigate the laws of the country they are in (particularly if you are out of a lot of money). Since the various laws of other nations are too complex to go into here, you will have to research elsewhere, but take heart: there are many instances where people have used the law to regain their cash, particularly if the casino is in a country that will help you out.

Some of these countries include the UK, Australia, Costa Rica, Antigua, Netherlands Antilles and Belize, where a lot of the better casinos are. In the rare case that a credit card company has allowed you to make a deposit with your card, there may also be a way to charge back your deposit (no luck on the winnings), so check into that. Remember: This may end up being a lesson that you have learned the hard way, particularly if you are in a country that outlaws online gambling, which is why it is so important to make sure the site you are dealing with is reputable and will be before you make your first deposit.

Third, give the scam site the bad name it’s earned by writing your story on every casino or sports book review site, watchdog site and message board you can find. Go ahead and write a review on this site right now. You don’t want someone else to go through the hassle that you did. Betting companies know that being listed on the review sites’ “Blacklist” pages is the kiss of death, so make sure you put them on all of them by telling your story. Make sure to report them to the IB

Remember: These scam sites hurt you financially, and this is one of the few situations where you can do the same.

Let everyone know what you went through and the internet betting community will listen and effectively boycott them.