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BetOnline Seizes Poker Account Balances

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Two serious complaints were posted on forums this week about BetOnline Poker. The two posters stated that they had a combined $102,000 seized by BetOnline’s poker department. This follows up a third complaint from November 1, 2011 where a played had $11,400 sized. BetOnline accuses these players of chip dumping in separate, unrelated cases.

What is Chip Dumping?

Chip dumping is when one player intentionally loses chips to another player. This can be done for a variety of reasons. One reason is to make a transfer to another player when the poker room does not allow player to player transfers. Other reasons are not so innocent. Chip dumping can also be something two players involved in a fraud might do to try and cash out stolen funds. A fraudster might deposit using a stolen credit card. The fraudster can then intentionally dump to a friend. The friend then cashes out the money lost to him by their friend. A player can sometimes cash those funds out before the poker room receives the chargeback from the stolen credit cards. Other times the poker room is able to catch it and block both accounts and recover the stolen funds.

How Do Poker Rooms Catch Chip Dumping?

Poker rooms have security departments that monitor games to make sure they are fair. These security departments also monitor the payment processing. Some poker rooms share information about fraudsters including their names, IP addresses, credit card information and computer information. If a player is on a blacklist, the player is often banned or watched closely to make sure nothing fraudulent is occurring. If a fraudster is not detected at the time of sign up or deposit they can still be caught in other ways. When a player requests their first cashout there is often a security check. These security checks can go through hand histories in an attempt to locate how the player won. Most times these security checks do not find any problems and the players get paid. Other times, security locates chip dumping or other fraud.

BetOnline Poker Security

Although BetOnline is a part of a network they appear to do their own security checks. That is an unusual situation as typically networks handle security. It appears that BetOnline is not very experienced in the poker department. This shows in the way that they have handled these situations. When other poker rooms handle chip dumping the poker room’s security department investigates. If there was no fraud involved, the poker room usually gives a warning to the players about how chip dumping is against the rules and the players are free to play again. If fraud is suspected the player’s accounts are closed and the fraudulent funds are confiscated. In one of the incidents BetOnline accuses a player of playing a friend heads up on the same IP address. If the software was secure, it would be impossible for two players to play at the same table from the same IP address.

BetOnline Seizes Player Funds

BetOnline accuses one player of chip dumping $50 to his friend to help boost his bankroll. There was nothing fraudulent in the chip dumping. There was no stolen credit card used and both players were legitimate players in good standing. The punishment for this $50 chip dump is that the player forfeits $37,000. In the other incident, a player with a $65,000 balance was accused of chip dumping. No specific amount for the chip dumping has been discussed, but BetOnline seized the player’s entire balance. They have refused to email the player hand histories after repeated attempts claiming the file is too large. BetOnline offered to email the hand histories of the suspicious hands but they have yet to do so. The player owed $37,000 admits to giving a friend a $50 boost by intentionally losing it to him at a heads up poker game at the same table from the same IP address. Unlike most poker rooms, BetOnline does not prevent two players on the same IP from sitting at the same table. In fact, the software security is so poor that if you log in to Action Poker and BetOnline Poker at the same time you can sit at two seats at the same table. This is a serious software flaw that helped create this situation. If the software were secure this situation would not have happened. The player that is owed $65,000 denies that he chip dumped at all and has yet to see any proof of the accusation.

What Happens to the Forfeited Money?

In most instances when there is a fraud at an online poker room the poker room will redistribute the forfeited funds to the players that were cheated. If the poker room was the victim due to a fraudulent deposit, the funds will go to cover the fraud losses. This situation is different though because there are no victims. No other players lost money to these alleged chip dumpers. The alleged chip dumping did not cause any harm to any other players. Since there are no victims to reimburse and the deposits were not fraudulent it would appear that BetOnline is going to keep the $102,000 should these issues not get resolved. It is hard to find any scenario where a poker room should get to keep $102,000 for any reason, much less such a minor offense like this.

BetOnline Poker Network Controversy

BetOnline’s poker room was controversial from day one. BetOnline claimed that their poker room was on the Hero Poker Network. BetOnline is actually on the Action Poker Network. The Action Poker Network has been the subject of many player complaints about slow paying withdrawals. Complaints about the network’s cashout issues go back over two years. The Action Poker Network includes poker rooms such as Action Poker, Tiger Gaming and PayNoRake. The Action Poker Network does not accept U.S. players but BetOnline does so this appears to be a workaround to protect Action Poker. The Action Poker Network is owned by the publicly traded company Las Vegas from Home.

Avoid Casino and Poker at BetOnline

Due to the seizure of player funds without grounds to do so and the fact that BetOnline stands to profit from their decision we feel there is a high risk to player funds. Whether this is a rogue act by their poker room or just a lack of competency in their security department we feel that there are far better choices for poker players in the U.S. At the risk sports betting players we recommend to BetOnline could be cheated in their poker room we have downgraded them to C- and removed all affiliate advertisements and links to their website. For other alternatives refer to our Sportsbook Rating Guide.


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