Betfair closed my account, i can’t withdraw my money 18141$.

[Am1go]

Hello! I am poker player. Betfair blocked my account after two deposits in the amount of 17,200$. Betfair does not return money for 2.5 months. After I made a deposit I didn't play. Total on my account: 18141$

I understand that such a huge amount of my 2 deposits looks suspicious. But i try to manage my money evenely in the póker rooms, everybody remembers black friday. I thought Betfair was very reliable institution…



I sent all the necessary documents.

Betfair replied:



I attached screenshots of my withdrawals to skrill from different poker rooms.






The answer came on the last day of the deadline (30 days).





I sent a full audit from pokerstars for this year. I won $ 89,000 and you can see withdrawals to my bank account and to skrill. I sent a screenshot of the pokerstars account where you can see the full compliance of personal data. I can send pokerstars audit to the moderator.

20 days later ... Betfair answered me:




I suspect this is due ...

“Online sports betting exchange Betfair is cutting off its Russian customers on the same day its parent company Flutter Entertainment completed its mega-merger with PokerStars’ parent The Stars Group (TSG).Betfair’s Russian customers woke Tuesday to discover that the site had “taken the decision to close its websites for all existing Russian customers.” The site is no longer accepting new customer registrations and existing customers have been given until May 18 to withdraw the funds in their accounts.”


I decided to continue communication through resolver.co.uk. I sent my lifetime report (two years) from a poker party. I attached pdf files:

1.Financial Histories history (deposits or withdrawals)
2.Game movement history.
3. skrill reports pdf

I made deposits: 28570$
I made withdrawals: 92600$


This is report skrill pdf . A total of 13 files per transaction.







I thought this was the last thing I sent …

Betfair's answer after 2 weeks



My patience is over. I decided to write here.


Later...I sent a deposit report from my bank account(pdf) and a deposit report from my skrill account(pdf). I'm waiting for an answer…

[Am1go]

Dear Mr.

Thank you for contacting the Malta Gaming Authority.

Please be informed that all B2C licensees are now required to make readily available to players the applicable procedures for referring a dispute to the operator’s appointed Alternative Dispute Resolution provider (ADR).

The approved ADR provider for PPB Counterparty Services Limited (betfair.com) is IBAS

https://www.ibas-uk.com/

Kindly direct your dispute to the appointed entity accordingly.

Regards

[Archery1969]

Hi,

As a Poker player have you been running an automated poker playing bot ?

If the answer is Yes then Betfair and other sites install software to detect bots and if they think you are then they will close your account and seize any money in it. Which i believe under their T&C's they can. Your chances of getting it back are extremely remote unless you can afford to take them to court etc.

Cheers,

[Dannyboy1]

Hi
I’m glad I’m not the only oneS They have done the same to me.
No poker, exchange only. VIP account with a manager. 11 year old account.
It’s been 3 months and they have £62k of my money locked up.
It’s impossible to get a response from anyone with half a brain. There are many others on twitter and other forums with similar problems.

Literally nothing you send will satisfy whatever it is they are looking for. I’ve sent them everything you could imagine and then after 2 weeks of silence they ask for something else - like a winning shop bet slip from 2013(!!?). My only theory is that it’s some PP idiot types who don’t understand the exchange.

I am in the process of sending a Letter Before Action and will probably be forced to take legal action to get my funds returned.

[Euler]

Curiously I've heard of this happening in a few cases and across different platforms. Not sure what is going on, or why the compliance has suddenly tightened.

Of course, it's really tough to get a handle on the detail without knowing everything.

[Dannyboy1]

They have requested and I have sent them the following so far;

Passport
Bank statement, Utility bill and Council tax bill
190+ screenshots of winnings bets from my other accounts
9 pdfs of p/l from other bookmakers
3 years of unredacted bank statements in pdf
1 year of PayPal statements
1 year of NETELLER statements pdf format
Business bank accounts showing dividends being paid to me
HMRC tax forms for 6 years (!!!)

All of that over an 8 week period.

Then they reply after a 2 week silence asking to see shop bet slips from 2013 because I told them I used to sharb in 2013.

It’d be laughable if it wasn’t happening to me.

[eightbo]

Guess they wanted to inflate the Q2 earnings. In all seriousness though, this is scary.

Can't see you both not being returned the sums back but you do wonder why they're dragging it out so much and no straight answer as to why is comical.

Where are both of your accounts registered and are there costs involved with the legal process?

[Naffman]

I've seen someone has had similar trouble with Football Index, seems bookies are becoming even more scummy than before...but try and threaten to take it further and if they still dont play ball then do take it further

[Dannyboy1]

Guess they wanted to inflate the Q2 earnings. In all seriousness though, this is scary.

Can't see you both not being returned the sums back but you do wonder why they're dragging it out so much and no straight answer as to why is comical.

Where are both of your accounts registered and are there costs involved with the legal process?

I’ll get the money back one way or another but it’s not ideal having 60k+ tied up for all these months. I am from the UK and my account is registered in UK. When I read similar threads to this I never thought it’d happen to me but just goes to show. I’ve been to many betfair events, am a betfair VIP with account manager for almost a decade.

The letter before action will cost me a small amount -
Plus an additional 10% of my balance to take it to court (I think). Those fees will be added to amount I pursue them for.

Anyway, don’t want to go too off topic so good luck am1go with your account.

[Am1go]

Anyway, don’t want to go too off topic so good luck am1go with your account.

Thank you!

Did you send a complaint to IBAS?

[Kai]

Very sorry to hear that guys and I hope you get it all back sooner rather than later, and without too much additional cost.

But Betfair accounts where the balance is entirely funded by exchange winnings should be safe/immune from this type of nonsense, no?

They only may make a fuss if people deposit larger amounts, right?

Bad timing to read something like this, I've been growing my balance by not withdrawing anything this month in order to cover more liabilities/opportunities and expand a bit, but seeing this type of stuff almost makes me think twice about that. I guess they can randomly ban my country whenever and seize the account in a similar way, seen it happen to neighboring countries and friends that live over there.

I should probably change the account to a UK address ASAP, if that makes the account more secure from their shenanigans. Irrational fears are irrational.

[Derek27]

William Hill got fined 2 or 3 million for allowing a compulsive gambler to deposit and lose £50K without carrying out the money laundering checks, which is probably why Betfair are heavy-handed about this. But expecting anyone to provide years of transactions and lifetime profits from 20 bookies, some of which may not even be in business is ridiculous. Even worse, losing betting slips! Who the fuck keeps all their losing betting slips??

[poklius]

Just yesterday got my account back after it being closed for 2 weeks. I did withdraw all funds during lockdown and then made deposits of total ~6k Eur, which I guess was enough to raise money laundering flags. Mind you, I'm full time bf trader, PC2, 10years+, so I guess my case was simple as it took "only" two weeks to get account back. Had to upload all statements, passport, cards, explain what I do, etc.. So yes, depositing money to bf atm is asking for trouble.

Btw, they don't give you any warnings, you just notice bets not going through, your whole account could be exposed, they don't give a damn.

Good luck to OP and Dannyboy1

[Kai]

Just yesterday got my account back after it being closed for 2 weeks. I did withdraw all funds during lockdown and then made deposits of total ~6k Eur, which I guess was enough to raise money laundering flags. Mind you, I'm full time bf trader, PC2, 10years+, so I guess my case was simple as it took "only" two weeks to get account back. Had to upload all statements, passport, cards, explain what I do, etc.. So yes, depositing money to bf atm is asking for trouble.

Btw, they don't give you any warnings, you just notice bets not going through, your whole account could be exposed, they don't give a damn.

Good luck to OP and Dannyboy1

Thanks for sharing that, must have been rough losing who knows how much money by not being able to trade for weeks.

I did something similar 13 months ago when I withdrew most of my trading bank as a precautionary measure when my ISP DNS-blocked all foreign bookies from the country, and then I deposited 4-5k back into BF a day or two later after it was clear that Betfair didn't care about my local blockade. But had no issues with that deposit and these things never even crossed my mind honestly, I was worried more about my account than the balance on it, but now I regret doing that since the only other deposit that I made was the starting trading bank (up to 1k) years ago, and I guess I can't really claim to them that I built my balance on their exchange anymore.

So if you don't get flagged for this crap right after you deposit money into Betfair, does this mean you're in the clear and you can grow the balance to whatever size? Or is Betfair known to randomly flag accounts whenever, say when your balance grows to like 5 figures which may look juicy for them to potentially seize, are there any known documented cases around where Betfair did that sort of stuff or was it all directly related to bigger deposits?

And I may have skimmed through a few posts so it's unclear to me whether Dannyboy is a big Betfair winner or a bigger winner elsewhere, because logically I'd assume if you're winning big directly on Betfair then you should eventually get your funds back as it should be that much easier to prove where the money came from, like in the poklius example above.

Although I can definitely see how and why bigger winners from elsewhere would have all sorts of issues depositing larger amounts to Betfair nowadays, shifting money around was always going to get more complex eventually due to all the changes around, but I feel "PC payers" (aka bigger winners) should probably have an easier ride in case they get randomly flagged for whatever.

[Euler]

I have to jump through hoops nowadays to move money through financial institutions. I guess it's slightly worse for bookmakers.

I'm familiar with compliance procedures and they are triggered at just £5k, so companies have to show some level of diligence for amounts above that.

On a trip to the US once, one of my dollar cards was locked for the third time because I transferred £6k to it to funds expenses while I was overseas. This was an almighty pain as that was the whole reason for transferring the money. It was with a 'fintech' bank and there was no phone number to call just an online 'chat' area that took five or so days to reply to simple messages, which usually asked for more information.

I explained to them already that I had completed all compliance when I opened the account and twice before, when asked. They failed to resolve it in enough time for me to use any funds, so on my return, I transferred the money back and they locked it again asking why I had transferred funds in and out. You really couldn't make it up.