I'm a casual player and I have been playing at pokerstars since 2009. Last week my account was suddenly frozen and I wrote an e-mail to support for more information. Yesterday I tried to log in and my account was still frozen and I wrote one more e-mail requesting information what is going on as they did not reply to the first e-mail.

Today I received this e-mail from Stars security:

Hello ,
Thank you for your email.

In line with our internal security processes, we carry out periodic business risk assessments on randomly selected accounts.

We regret to inform you that your account has not passed this recent screening process, which has resulted in the permanent closure of your account.

(my screen name here)

We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.


Regards,

Davide
Stars Security


This happened to anyone else? They just closed my account and seized my bankroll without a reason.. I'm a casual player, not a business risk..

At least you finally got a reason to make your first post

"Business risk" sounds like they suspect some kind of fraud, maybe renting the account to VPN'ers or involved in some kind of money laundering/financial fraud. Do you deposit with a lot of different cards, make/receive a lot of transfers and/or play using a VPN or lots of different locations?

Stars support are notoriously bad now - it could be a simple mistake, mistaken identity, random button clicking by support etc. Ask for it to be escalated to a manager, preferably escalated to one of their main offices (IoM and Toronto I think?). If you get it escalated within their third-world support guys they just back each other up.

They can close any account at any time. Email them back and ask about your bankroll/funds on account

Happend to me. It was closed over 6m ago, and i have send a mail every week or so asking why, they dident even respond or said they would comeback to me, finally they did. Just to tell me they stole a few $k . They dont tell me why i am banned, so insane. At leat when they ban and take a players fund they shuld tell me what rule i broke...


"We appreciate your patience whilst we completed our investigation and also thank you for your time and responses in regards to communications with us. Unfortunately, upon completion of our investigation, we have determined that you have violated our Terms of Service which can be found on our website at:

www.pokerstars.eu/poker/room/tos/

All funds within your account/s have been confiscated and you have been barred from future play at our tables. Do not attempt to open another account or play using someone else's account. Any further accounts that you create or access will be closed without warning, and the funds therein seized.
"

I received the exact same message yesterday when I tried to log in for the first time in 6 weeks after being away. I haven't done anything wrong obviously so this is very bizarre. I have a little over $300 in the account and they haven't even told me how I can get my money back.

The only reason I can think of for this to happen is I received a few very small transfers lately from people that I transferred some crypto to(people I was helping out with CHP at CoinPoker) and they repaid me with $5 or $7 transfers on Stars. How this would breach the terms of service is beyond me.

This is the exact wording of the email:

Hello XXXXX,
Thank you for your email.

In line with our internal security processes, we carry out periodic business risk assessments on randomly selected accounts.

We regret to inform you that your account has not passed this recent screening process, which has resulted in the permanent closure of your account.

We would like to take this opportunity to advise you of our Terms of Service regarding your responsibility as an account owner. As stated in section 8 under "Breach":

8.1. Without prejudice to any other rights, if a User breaches in whole or in part any provision contained herein, the Stars Group or any other company within the Group which provides services to the User reserves the right to take such action as it sees fit, including terminating this Agreement or any other agreement in place with the User, immediately blocking the User’s access to the Service or to any other service offered by the Group, terminating such User's account on the Sites or on any other Sites operated by the Group, seizing all monies held in the User’s account on the Sites or on any other Sites operated by the Group and/or taking legal action against such User.

Our Terms of Service can be found on our website at:

http://www.pokerstars.com/poker/room/tos/

We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.


Regards,

XXXXX
Stars Security

To enhance the security of your Stars Account, we strongly encourage you to set up our additional security features; Stars PIN, SMS Verification, RSA Token and Security Questions.

Activation of these features is extremely simple and can be completed within the ‘Account’ menu within our software.

We will NEVER ask you to confirm your login credentials or password via email, phone or chat facility or in any way. We do not advise giving your login information to anyone under any circumstances.

So I sent another email today protesting my innocence and they responded within a few hours telling me they have escalated my case and will get back to me as soon as possible. I can't complain about this. They are handling it very fast and professionally.

I'm guessing that their security software has flagged a few of us for some reason and they will unfreeze my account as soon as they see that I did nothing wrong. It's bad timing as I was hoping to play the Turbo Series starting tomorrow.

No I only deposit rarely with one or two different cards, one from Skrill and one from my own bank. The rake is so sick so there has not been too much cashouts either.

I do not need to play using a VPN as online poker is legal in my country and I have never used one. I have only played from two different locations, mainly from my home or friends house.

This is insane.

Have your home PC or your friend PC used by any other pokerstars accounts. They take seriously if someone login from location where another suspicious account have played on.

LOL at you guys imagining we did something wrong. I did absolutely nothing wrong...nothing. Nothing includes everything you can think of.

I'm guessing that they have security software that incorrectly flagged my account. Once they check on it they will see that it is a mistake. Same with these other guys. It's no mystery that we all had it happen at the same time...probably recently implemented software.

Stars used to have some pretty bulky rules regarding P2P transfers. It used to include terminology along the lines of you cannot send or receive transfers to pay for 3rd party (outside pokerstars) items/services. Unable to find such wording in their latest TOS though

CoinPoker might be considered to be a rival to Stars

That said, if you posted your Stars SN, someone from Stars who works there and sees this thread might be able to look into your issue and help you

Bingo! You may have hit the nail on the head sir. That would explain it. So. technically, I actually did do something wrong but wasn't aware it was wrong.

My Stars screen name is: Zorrog

It wouldn't surprise me if some past alleged scammers and cheaters who have been banned from PS are now considering playing at CP to try to better hide their RL identities. Perhaps one of their other accounts at PS transferred to you, and now PS thinks you are also guilty, by association?

Maybe list everyone you helped and attach links to your and their posts here, to show PS you were just trying to do a good deed for a few fellow players?

EVEN if i did something wrong, dont we deserve what we did wrong?

They wont even answer me and tell me why my funds are taken. Just that i broke the rules, but not what rule... LOL

Thanks Mike. OK, I will list the people who transferred to me on Stars when I transferred crypto to them, There are only 2.


#1 'traumspot'






Email from Stars on 29 Jan 2018:

""Hello Zorrog,

We have transferred USD 6.00 to your account as requested by 'traumsport'.

Good luck to you both.

Regards,

PokerStars Cashier""



#2 "nahkaka"



Email from Stars on 29 Jan 2018:

""Hello Zorrog,

We have transferred USD 5.00 to your account as requested by 'nahkakalevi'.

Good luck to you both.

Regards,

PokerStars Cashier""






Another email from Stars on 29 Jan 2018:


"Hello Zorrog,

We have transferred USD 5.00 to your account as requested by 'nahkakalevi'.

Good luck to you both.

Regards,

PokerStars Cashier""



Those were the only 2 transfers on PokerStars.

I will be surprised if those two tiny transfers are the reason why your account was closed and money taken, simply because if that is all that was needed to get accounts closed then you would see a lot of couple buck spite transfers to hard core regs from newly created fraud accounts (deposit with a credit card and charge back etc) and such to screw them.

Ideally Pokerstars will make it more clear what happened here, as this is certainly one of the times where that would be informative, and if it is because of 11 bucks in transfers then I will be the first to say I am surprised at that.

I would be surprised if these decisions were being made by a human, but I am guessing they are not. They probably have security software that doomswitched me automatically based on a faulty algorithm. The amount of the transfer wouldn't matter and the number of transfers wouldn't matter...the algorithm sees certain conditions met and auto freezes the account.

We're going to see this happen more often. A good example is the mass banwave on 888. Poker sites are trying to save money so they are relying more and more on software to make decisions. Then the onus is on the customer to prove his innocence. The first thing they do is send the standard "You are banned for life" email. Then it takes multiple emails and a great deal of effort to get them to escalate. If you catch a support person on a bad day or get a lazy one then it can take months or never get resolved. I got lucky that they escalated my case right away. Why would they ignore "DonSalas" for 6 months but reply to me right away?

Perhaps it is a software issue, but if nothing mattered (in terms of size or frequency of transfers) then 2 cents to KidPoker would have got him banned long ago.

More details should be given, and ideally they will be, but I suspect there is more to it than a 5 buck transfer, because again if a single 5 buck transfer caused accounts receiving it to be closed, then there would have already been a flood of spite transfers resulting in a ton of permanent account closures etc.

Yeah, you're probably right.

.........amazing

You really think every single OP that swore he was innocent was actually innocent?

Yeah, I should be in prison for receiving two $5 transfers on Stars.

This sounds like a surprising story. How much did you have confiscated?

Just received an email from Stars. So it was the $5 transfer that got my account frozen:


""security@starsaccount.com
7:38 AM (50 minutes ago)
to me
Hello XXXXX,

Thank you for your email and your patience.

Please be advised that your Stars Account was flagged during a routine security check.

As part of our security procedures, we ask you kindly to please explain your relation to the player 'traumsport' and the reason why you transferred funds to this player.

Thank you for your cooperation. We look forward to hearing from you.

Regards,

XXXXXXX
Stars Security

To enhance the security of your Stars Account, we strongly encourage you to set up our additional security features; Stars PIN, SMS Verification, RSA Token and Security Questions.

Activation of these features is extremely simple and can be completed within the ‘Account’ menu within our software.

We will NEVER ask you to confirm your login credentials or password via email, phone or chat facility or in any way. We do not advise giving your login information to anyone under any circumstances.""

you sent him funds on pokerstars, or its just lazy (shoddy) work from stars security?

I never sent him funds on PokerStars. He transferred $5 to me.

So I just had my account unfrozen. I'm very happy with the outcome. I will be able to play the Turbo Series after all! I will not be transferring funds ever again on Stars.

Here's the email they sent me:

""security@starsaccount.com
6:39 PM (17 minutes ago)
to me
Dear XXXXX,

Thank you for your reply.

A review of the transfer activity in your account it has been determined that you used our transfer privilege for something other than its intended purpose, which is to fund the account to play.

We have made a final exception in your case and have reinstated your account. We must warn you that using the transfer privilege to buy or sell chips or to trade any type of cryptocurrency will lead to the permanent closure of your account.

We thank you for your understanding and cooperation.


Regards,

XXXXX
Stars Security

To enhance the security of your Stars Account, we strongly encourage you to set up our additional security features; Stars PIN, SMS Verification, RSA Token and Security Questions.

Activation of these features is extremely simple and can be completed within the ‘Account’ menu within our software.

We will NEVER ask you to confirm your login credentials or password via email, phone or chat facility or in any way. We do not advise giving your login information to anyone under any circumstances.""

Good luck to you other guys who've had your account frozen.