Originally Posted by
Dan Druff
My take:
It is definitely very frustrating to have your funds locked up, support refusing to tell you why, and then ultimatley confiscated. It's even worse when you aren't told what you supposedly did.
I can tell you that, from my experience, this looks like suspicion of bonus abuse.
Bonus abuse -- or suspected bonus abuse -- accounts for a very high percentage of casino-related account closures on online sites. To be fair, most accused of bonus abuse are actually guilty of it, even though they will sometimes claim otherwise when looking for support on forums or social media. However, there are also cases where bonus abuse is wrongly suspected. This actually happened to me about 6 years ago (though not on ACR/WPN).
What is bonus abuse? Typically it's one of these three things:
- Operating multple accounts on the same site for purposes of redeeming lucrative bonuses, which are supposed to be one-per-person
- Referring fake accounts or relatives/friends' accounts operated by you, in order to get unjustified referral bonuses, or to win referral contests
- Taking advantage of glitches or oversights in the bonus system in order to earn large bonuses which weren't intended
However, some sites will also stretch the term of "bonus abuse" to be the following:
- Depositing for a bonus even when your balance is already high
- Clearing bonuses optimally in order to give yourself the highest chance to walk away with real money
- Operating bonuses in the pattern of the appearance of being a pro gambler, even if not explicitly violating terms of service
When accounts get shut down for alleged bonus abuse, sites tend to act cagey about the situation, because they don't want to give the "abusers" any clues how to avoid getting caught next time. Therefore, you'll get language such as "discrepancies", "TOS violations", and "abuse", and not much more.
When such account shutdowns occur, players often don't understand. They either believe it's a sinister attempt to steal their money, or a false accusation regarding cheating at casino games (and they wonder how that's possible). Even the ones who actually abused bonuses sometimes don't understand that they did anything against terms.
In any case, it often can be hard to separate the people who were legitimately victimized by the site from those who really did abuse bonuses in some way.
While I don't know John/MightyMau5, I get the vibe that he really does seem perplexed as to what's going on here, and doesn't believe he did anything wrong. He might be correct.
John, I do have a fairly good relationship with Chris Moneymaker, and sometimes I can even get Phil Nagy to have a conversation with me. I would be willing to attempt to start a conversation about you, provided I am convinced that you were the victim of a wrongful account closure.
Please answer the following questions for me:
1) Have you only had one account on each WPN skin played on your computer or IP address? (That is, please let me know if any friends/relatives used their WPN accounts on your computer or IP address at any point in the past year.)
2) Have you redeemed any deposit bonuses recently on ACR or WPN?
3) It seemed from your story that you were earning bonus spins for your slot play, and that you "opened your bonuses" before going to bed on January 11. You described these bonuses as 25 spins each, for a total of 75 spins, but you also said you "opened bonuses", which sounds like it's more than just free slot spins. Can you explain which bonuses you received/opened on January 11?
4) Were these bonuses open to everyone on ACR, or targeted to specific people?
5) Did any other accounts ever receive or redeem these bonuses, which could possibly be associated with you -- such as friends or relatives?
6) Is auto-spinning a feature on ACR slots, or were you using an external program to accomplish this?
7) How much of that $12,400 on ACR was won by playing slots or redeeming bonuses?
8) Regarding the acount which received the $3,000 on January 11, who is it? You don't have to name them, but please let me know if that person could possibly be believed to be you? For example, if it's your brother, the answer would be yes. If it's your roommate, the answer would be yes. If it's your buddy who comes over and plays ACR from your house sometimes, the answer would be yes. If it's someone unrelated across the country who has never used their account on your computer or IP before, the answer would be no.
Please be truthful here. I'm not looking to judge you here. Just be aware that if I get Chris Moneymaker or someone similar to look into it, and it turned out you didn't tell me the whole story, it will leave me in a bad position and I will have to back off and give up. So please tell me everything here, the good and the potentially bad/questionable, and I'll give you advice what to do from here.
Keep in mind that you're not in the strongest position here. You aren't a well known player, and ACR has no real regulator, and makes their own rules/decisions. If you are truly 100% innocent, there's a decent chance I can get this reversed. If you're not, it will come out quickly, and you'll be in the same spot as before. Clearly they THINK they have something on you. It is highly unlikely they're trying to outright steal from you. It's much more likely that they think you've engaged in some kind of abuse of their system, so they will present what they think they have to whomever I try to get to help.
If you don't feel comfortable answering everything publicly, you can PM the answer to me, or send a Twitter DM.
Good luck.