For those of you unfamiliar with the OSGA, it is kind of a self-appointed watchdog site for the online sportsbetting industry. They do not have any real power, but they have good relationships with most of the major books, and in turn have influence in mediating problems. Sportsbooks have an incentive to cooperate with OSGA because OSGA certifies them as trustworthy and thus customers are more willing to bet at those books.
Here is the OSGA website: http://www.osga.com/
Anyway, as many of you are aware, badguy23 recently accused Bovada of stealing from him. This surprised me because Bovada, while often behaving foolishly and providing poor customer service, has been known throughout the years to be an honest book. I have personally used Bodog/Bovada a good deal since 2005, so I am very familiar with them.
badguy23 complained to the OSGA about Bovada, and one of their reps contacted me for my opinion on him. The OSGA was initially going to turn down this investigation because of the various scam accusations against badguy here, especially the one from Yebsite. They figured this was yet another scammer trying to get over on a sportsbook and complaining when it failed. However, I talked the investigator into ignoring badguy23's history and doing the investigation anyway, as it seemed very possible from badguy23's story that it might have had merit. If Bovada really did something wrong, I didn't want it swept under the rug just because badguy23 wasn't of impeccable character. The investigator reluctantly agreed and looked into the matter. I will post the findings below.
The Background
On January 1, 2013, badguy23 deposited some money (I believe a few thousand) to Bovada through Western Union.
This is how a Western Union deposit to Bovada works:
1) You call Bovada and tell them how much you want to deposit.
2) They give you the information of some shady character to send the money to in the Philippines.
3) You go down to Western Union and make the deposit for the exact amount you told Bovada you would be sending.
4) You call Bovada and give them the "Money Transfer Control Number" (MTCN), and they send the shady Filipino down to pick up the money. Once the money is picked up (usually this takes 30-45 minutes), Bovada credits your account for the full deposit PLUS any fees you paid.
This is really the only no-fee way to deposit to Bovada, as they charge a minimum of 5% for everything else, which is brutal if your deposit is large.
I have done the above many times, so I am very familiar with the procedure.
badguy23 claims to have done this on January 1st, followed all instructions, and Bovada credited his account. He then fired various sports bets with the money, which ended up doing very well, and he won something like 9k. (My numbers might be off here, but they are unimportant to the story.)
A short time later, Bovada contacted badguy23 and told him that the MTCN he gave them was bad. He insisted that they must have written it down wrong, and repeated it to them. The repeated MTCN was checked, and indeed it was valid. However, Bovada insisted that his recent bets were all done with "bad money" (since the deposit was unable to be verified at the time through the MTCN), and they canceled those retroactively.
badguy23 insisted that they were trying to find an excuse to cancel those bets because he won, and the fact that they later verified he really deposited on Jan 1 (but somehow the MTCN was miscommunicated) should prove that he wasn't trying to roll them. He said that the error was on their end, and that those bets should definitely stand.
Bovada looked into it, and among other things, found the Yebsite thread accusing badguy23 of being a scammer. Specifically, that thread contained a chat log of badguy23 advising Yebsite how to roll another online site. As a result, Bovada decided that badguy23 was trying yet another scheme to roll an online gambling site, and refused to continue discussion of the matter.
badguy23 then complained to the OSGA.
badguy23's claims
badguy23's claims were as follows:
- He definitely made a Western Union deposit to the proper individual on January 1st, and could easily prove it.
- Bovada has a strict policy NOT to credit anyone's account until the deposited funds are verified.
- Therefore, Bovada's Western Union deposit method is fraud-proof (aside from credit card fraud, which did not occur here). If Bovada has credited your account, that means the money is definitely there. If it's not, it was due to an error on Bovada's end.
- Regardless of who made the error with the MTCN, it was on Bovada to check out if it was good, and to inform him if it wasn't, so he could correct it. It was unfair for Bovada to tell him it was good, let him make bets, and then yank those winning bets away when there was a slight error in the MTCN that prevented them from collecting the money immediately.
- Bovada was using this situation as an excuse to paying out a fairly large sportsbook win, despite the failure being on their end.
Here is a very convoluted thread about the situation: http://pokerfraudalert.com/forum/sho...-BOVADA-STEALS!!!
My Initial Findings
Despite badguy23's reputation for being less than honest, my familiarity with the Bovada deposit process made me think that there was a good chance he was innocent here.
This is because I have had Western Union deposits fail with Bovada before (because I was erroneously seen by Western Union as a romance scam victim), and I NEVER received credit in my Bovada account in those situations. Basically, if Bovada can't collect the money, they don't credit my account.
My conclusion was that Bovada's crediting of badguy23's account was an admission that his deposit was good (or that at least they thought it was). If they made some mistake on their end and credited him when they had some problem picking up the money, they should not penalize him for it, provided he could prove that he really made the deposit when he said he did.
Simply put, the burden should be on Bovada to verify the Western Union money really arrived. If it's not, they could easily freeroll their customers by demanding to collect the money if the customer loses, while canceling all winning bets.
For this reason, I insisted that the OSGA investigator look into this matter, regardless of badguy23's shady reputation.
OSGA's Findings
OSGA found that Bovada has a previously unknown policy regarding Western Union deposits on major holidays.
On almost all days of the year, Bovada's Filipino runners can verify the Western Union deposits, so Bovada refuses to credit players until these deposits are verified.
However, on major holidays (such as Jan 1), there is no way to verify Western Union deposits, either because the Western Union offices are closed in the Philippines, or because they cannot find any runners to work that day (I'm guessing the former).
Therefore, Bovada gives players a "good faith" credit when they deposit on those days. They only verify the money is actually there on the following day.
Since this gives players a chance to freeroll them (by giving a phony MTCN), Bovada's policy is to cancel all bets made with the "bad" money if they discover they cannot collect the money through the MTCN. Usually this happens before the player can make any bets, as Bovada typically does not credit accounts until the money is verified. However, on these major holidays, Bovada takes the risk that the deposit was good, and credits accounts without verifying it until the next day.
It is OSGA's opinion that badguy23 knew about this January 1st loophole, and intentionally provided Bovada with a bad MTCN, intending only to provide them with the correct one AFTER his bets won. If his bets lost, he would simply get a refund from Western Union, and Bovada would have no recourse other than to close his account.
OSGA did note that it is possible that badguy23 is simply a victim of bad luck, and that there truly was an honest MTCN screwup, making this entire thing unintentional. However, they concluded from his reputation that this is unlikely, and in fact would still have likely ruled against him even if his reputation were good.
My Opinion
Oddly enough, I actually had a January 1st situation myself on Bovada, except it was in 2012 instead of 2013.
I deposited with Western Union on Jan 1 last year, after Bovada erroneously told me they could process it. When I called to give them the MTCN, they told me that I was given the wrong info earlier, and they couldn't actually process it that day. I was really irritated by this, and as compensation, they let me deposit that day by credit card for no fees. However, I was shocked to get home and see that I had been credited for BOTH the WU deposit and the credit card. The difference here was that my WU deposit was good, and they must have picked up the money the next day.
However, I was surprised they were able to credit me on Jan 1, after insisting that they couldn't. At the time I assumed they were just able to find someone to get the money on Jan 1, but now it appears they just credited me on good faith and got the money later.
This is consistent with OSGA's claim that Bovada changes their policy on January 1 and gives good faith credits without verifying the MTCN.
While I will never know for sure, if I had to guess, I would say that badguy23 likely knew about this situation, and probably was trying to roll them. It's possible that he got screwed here, but if I had to bet on it, I would say that badguy23 was trying to freeroll them and was caught.
It should also be noted that badguy23 will be receiving his January 1 deposit back, as Western Union has refunded it to him.
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Originally Posted by simpdog
