From 2+2
Source: https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/2...-wife-1767543/Originally Posted by dUbUp24I have been a long time player on Bovada for years and years. Recently, my wife wanted to start playing poker as well due to being stuck at home from the Covid-19 lockdown, so I decided to send her my referral code to sign up so I could get a bonus when she signs up and deposits. So she signed up and deposited $50 from her credit card and I got $100 referral bonus. I also sent her a voucher for $3000 and $143 which I was going to cash out but decided to just keep it in her account so she could have a bankroll and incase I needed to redeposit, she could just send me a voucher back. I only left $100 in my account which was from the bonus and wanted to build it up from that as a side challenge. My wife won some money in poker and betting on esports and her account went to $4,698 after about a month, most if not all her winnings were from winning esports bets and she was pretty much breakeven at Zone Poker 25NL. She wanted to cashout earlier around $4,000 but Bovada said she had to play through the whole voucher deposit of $3,000 to be able to cash out, so she played through it in poker and esports bets. So after the playthrough, she wanted to cash out the $4,698 via Bitcoin and after almost 48 hours of review, they cancelled the cashout and said the account was under investigation. 24 hours later, they called her and said her account was being disabled and all the funds in it would be seized because we broke the Terms of Service of having 2 accounts in the same household as well as abusing the referral bonus. They said they would return the $50 dollar deposit she made through her credit card though. My account was also shut down which I had $200 in that I was building up. I didn't read the Terms of Service before referring my wife and it does indeed say:
3.2 Single Account Access. You are permitted to open only one (1) Account. Only one account is allowed per household. Multiple accounts held by the same individual are subject to immediate closure and we reserve the right to seize any funds gained as a result of holding multiple accounts. Furthermore you shall not permit another person to access the Website or Software via your account without the express permission of Bovada.
I got no warning or anything, they just seized the funds and closed our accounts with all the money in them seized. I cannot even contact them via telephone because due to Covid-19 they turned their phone support off. Their chat reps just say their decision is final and they will not return any of the funds in the account except for the $50 my wife deposited from her credit card. In the email they sent me this is what rules they said I broke:
Broken Terms Of Service:
3.2 Single Account Access
3.6 Information to be Valid and Verifiable
6.2 Fraudulent Activity
6.7 "Betting Syndicates"
6.8 Abuse of Bonus Programs
I was only guilty of referring my wife who lives in the same household and I guess abusing the bonus program since I received a $100 bonus for referring her, but I honestly didn't know that was against TOS and I admit I was clearly in violation of that. So they seized the $4,698 in my wife's account and the $200 in my account. Does anyone have any advice? Any advice/input would greatly be appreciated, and again, I know I made a mistake and broke the Terms of Service but does that warrant all our funds being seized? Thank you.
This 2+2 community (the Internet Poker forum there, which tends to be a smarter subset of posters on the site) wasn't impressed. They saw right through this BS before I even found the thread.
Here was my response to him:
Originally Posted by Dan DruffAs many of you know, I run a site which focuses on frauds and scams in poker, and I'm always the first to back someone up who has been mistreated by a poker site.
I've also publicly complained about Bovada many times on 2+2 and my own site, so I'm not cheerleader of theirs.
With that said, it's 100% obvious that this guy thought he was clever, pulled shenanigans, got caught, and now is crying foul because the punishment (complete confiscation of bankroll on the site) is far more harsh than he figured it could be.
Your wife didn't play. It was obvious from the first post, and it's even more obvious now. You took over the account, hence the reason you transferred all of the money except for $100 to "her" account.
You didn't leave $100 in your account as a "side challenge" to run it up again. It's insulting our intelligence to say that. In reality, you left exactly $100 because that was the amount of the referral bonus, and thus that amount was stuck until it was cleared. So you moved all of the play over to "her" account, and you were playing on your old account just enough to clear the bonus, cash that out, and be done with it.
Then Bovada caught you, called you up, and you lied about the situation. That led to angering them further and believing you were a scammer, so they confiscated your roll.
I admit that their actions were harsh, but that's the breaks when you try to pull tricks on an online poker site -- especially one which basically makes its own rules and answers to nobody.
Why are they so hard line about this? I can answer that.
In previous years, Bovada has been victimized numerous times by bonus whore hustlers. This became easy to pull off, thanks to bitcoin as a new deposit method. The hustle worked like this:
1) Create new account with clean IP address
2) Fund with bitcoin for something like $1000, get initial deposit bonus
3) Clear the bonus via an aggressive, high-bet strategy which fails most of the time but occasionally clears the bonus with a high bankroll (5 figures)
4) If it fails to clear, dump the non-bonus chips to a friend in poker, and trash account
5) If bonus is cleared, cash out, profit 5 figures
6) Rinse and repeat
In case you're wondering, I never did this, though I was aware of it going on at the time.
Some guys made hundreds of thousands of $ doing this before Bovada caught on. Nowadays, Bovada is aggressively watching for this, so the above no longer works.
Hence, starting a new account, transferring money to it, and resuming play as if it's you (while attempting to clear the referral bonus on the original account) looks really bad to them, and reminds them of the above scheme (even though it's different, because presumably you didn't try to clear the $100 in an aggressive, high-bet fashion, or you wouldn't have had $200 in it when it got shut down.)
You basically F'd yourself when you lied to them on the phone. They aren't going to believe that your "wife" suddenly wanted to play the exact same limits and style you do, while at the same time you lost the desire to play other than to clear the bonus in your account. You should have just come clean once they caught you, perhaps cleaning up the story a bit so you don't look like you were just outright trying to jack $100 from them. Then you should have begged for them to let you continue playing, promising to never do it again. Since it's just a matter of $100, they might have allowed it.
Now you're screwed, and coming on 2+2 and lying about it just made matters worse.
Next time you want our help here, please don't insult our collective intelligence by telling us nonsense "wife" stories, and then acting outraged when we don't believe you.