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Betfold Poker(Ipoker) doesnt pay players and affiliates Betfold Poker(Ipoker) doesnt pay players and affiliates

03-15-2010 , 09:31 AM
Received a reply from Playtech:


Dear Hero,



Firstly, please accept my apologies that I have not been able to reply your email, we have had several managers here at Playtech working with our licensee to resolve these problems. Unfortunately, there is only a certain amount that we can do, as our licensee is Tain, and not Betfold. We have taken every step possible to help players get their money back, including ring-fencing Betfold so that they are effectively no longer a part of iPoker. Although monies are held by Betfold, not Playtech, we have been informed by Tain that players are already starting to receive payments again, and this will hopefully be completed by the end of the week.



Once again, apologies for all the frustration and distress that this situation has caused you; please know that Playtech has, and continues to work as hard as possible to monitor and resolve this situation for the players.



Kind regards

Sarah
Betfold Poker(Ipoker) doesnt pay players and affiliates Quote
03-15-2010 , 09:56 AM
It worries me that the people claiming to have received cash outs mostly have < 50 posts...
Betfold Poker(Ipoker) doesnt pay players and affiliates Quote
03-15-2010 , 10:05 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by OMGBennyLava
It worries me that the people claiming to have received cash outs mostly have < 50 posts...
...and havent been active at this tread for the last weeks^^ But i think many joined Jan/Feb just because of this issue.

I got the same email from playtech. Seems to be a standard one for everybody. Sounds like they are refusing from resposibility. Anyway something is going on (hopefully it does), i just wonder why, but who cares^^. I hope my cashout wasnt too big with 4.5
Betfold Poker(Ipoker) doesnt pay players and affiliates Quote
03-15-2010 , 10:08 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by OMGBennyLava
It worries me that the people claiming to have received cash outs mostly have < 50 posts...
becouse a loot of ppl lurk here and just post once in a while or if they need something
Betfold Poker(Ipoker) doesnt pay players and affiliates Quote
03-15-2010 , 10:10 AM
No emails, no cash here...
Betfold Poker(Ipoker) doesnt pay players and affiliates Quote
03-15-2010 , 10:11 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by illustro
...and havent been active at this tread for the last weeks^^ But i think many joined Jan/Feb just because of this issue.

I got the same email from playtech. Seems to be a standard one for everybody. Sounds like they are refusing from resposibility. Anyway something is going on (hopefully it does), i just wonder why, but who cares^^. I hope my cashout wasnt too big with 4.5
Quote:
Originally Posted by katmanx
becouse a loot of ppl lurk here and just post once in a while or if they need something
I'm just saying...
Betfold Poker(Ipoker) doesnt pay players and affiliates Quote
03-15-2010 , 10:22 AM
Good thing that ppl are getting the money, but +1 to coming out with the press-release REGARDLESS of everybody receiving their cashouts to the last dollar. This can't get by unpunished. I hope to see BetFold getting closed down. Scammers can't get away this easely.
Betfold Poker(Ipoker) doesnt pay players and affiliates Quote
03-15-2010 , 10:47 AM
got the same email. press release should be finished soon alothough we should wait util the "end of this week" as playtech said with the release
Betfold Poker(Ipoker) doesnt pay players and affiliates Quote
03-15-2010 , 11:09 AM
Are BF players still "locked out" of iPoker?
Betfold Poker(Ipoker) doesnt pay players and affiliates Quote
03-15-2010 , 11:17 AM
yes
Betfold Poker(Ipoker) doesnt pay players and affiliates Quote
03-15-2010 , 11:53 AM
shame, i didnt even get this email from playtech, unnecessary to say no mony too
Betfold Poker(Ipoker) doesnt pay players and affiliates Quote
03-15-2010 , 12:14 PM
Good to know. Let them pay, do the press realease thing and hope it's enought to put BF down. Maybe then ppl will think twice before trying to run another scheme like this.
Betfold Poker(Ipoker) doesnt pay players and affiliates Quote
03-15-2010 , 09:45 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by thedude2
Do you think there is a chance to get the rb aswell?
No probably not.
From my understanding, only funds in the player accounts are being covered.

Quote:
Originally Posted by K4sper
bad thing is , only ppl with small withdrawals (lower than 5k) are receiving anything. For us guys with bigger withdrawals its still looking grim
I don't know why you think this, I would actually say at the time you posted that you would feel much more confident in getting paid than say, a week ago.

It takes time for money to move into the relevant accounts, and for the individual debts to be verified and then paid.

I have been told by a couple sources that they are aiming to be finished by the end of the week, and it looks like Playtech is saying something similair.

Quote:
Originally Posted by illustro
I know there is plenty of unpaid money, so lets keep on forcing this issue.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but I don't think any of you have been forcing anything.
Your emails have largely been sent to the wrong places as far as I can discern.

Quote:
Originally Posted by WOLVER1NE
I hope to see BetFold getting closed down. Scammers can't get away this easely.
I think Betfold is closing, and yes obviously it should not be easy to scam players.

However I think you should all focus on getting your facts straight before "going public".

I may be wrong, but I think all of you believe that Betfold on the whole is responsible for this mess and that's all your investigating has concluded.

Do any of you have any names?
Do any of you know where your money is coming from with the recent payments?

I will do a writeup of the situation in the next couple days as best I can.
My general feeling from this thread is that most of you are not very aware of what has happened.
Betfold Poker(Ipoker) doesnt pay players and affiliates Quote
03-16-2010 , 05:04 AM
Offcourse must of us dont even know what happened! How could we know? We havent got answers from anyone about anything.

And we dont have to get our facts straight. That is wrong! That is not what we have do. Come on, we are customers not detectives! We only have to say what has happened to us from a customerperspective. And that story is true, the facts are right, because that is what happened to the customers (no money, no answers, no repsonse, no nothing). The rest is up to the journalist, reporter or whatever. Then its up to betfold/tain/playtech to straight it out.

The story in it self are that we did not get our money, contacted every source we could think of (betfold support, Tain, playtech, called playtech in israel who would call back, but havent done so) and nobody answered ****! People did not recieve either money or answers for months. Thats the story! Its based on emotions, customers dont want to play where these things can happen. Who did what and why, are not not really something we should focus on.

Last edited by goalan; 03-16-2010 at 05:33 AM.
Betfold Poker(Ipoker) doesnt pay players and affiliates Quote
03-16-2010 , 09:26 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by shobute
I think Betfold is closing, and yes obviously it should not be easy to scam players.

However I think you should all focus on getting your facts straight before "going public".

I may be wrong, but I think all of you believe that Betfold on the whole is responsible for this mess and that's all your investigating has concluded.

Do any of you have any names?
Do any of you know where your money is coming from with the recent payments?

I will do a writeup of the situation in the next couple days as best I can.
My general feeling from this thread is that most of you are not very aware of what has happened.
Good thing they're closing. As far the network goes, the damage has been done already, and closing BF won't make things right by any means, but still very good.

Now, about "getting the facts straight"... ****!! That's all we wanna do, from the beggining!! As many players would tell you, they tryed relentlessly to get the facts straight, know who has the money, who is holding it back, why are there delays in cashouts and what the **** is going on! What do they got? NO RESPONSE AT ALL!! How the f can we get things straight when BF doesn't answer, iPoker doesn't answer, Playtech doesn't answer, Tain doesn't answer, etc.

Nobody, absolutely nobody that we, as costumers, know was involved in the issue gave a rats arse to anything that was going on. I'm sorry and I'm pretty sure that's not exactly what happened, but this is how things look from our view: BF is holding back on the money. Players contact BF, Playtech, Tain, etc and either get no response or a "we don't have the money" std answer that worths the same as nothing. That's why we don't have "real names", neither know where the money is coming from and who is cleaning the mess up.

What are we supposed to do? How can we get the facts straight when no one cares to answer any of our questions? It's been 3+ months... not 3 weeks... at some point, as nobody cares to answer, we just assume things. They might be wrong assumptions, but it's all we got due to the lack of response of all the parts involved.

I'm sorry for the rant, and it's not aimed at you at all, but at the online poker industry as whole, that makes way too much money to leave costumers unnatended like this. No money, no answers, no nothing. Imho at some point, we, as costumers, are entitled to try and do something.

If the parts involved don't care to clarify things, I'm in favor of taking everyone's names (BF, PT, Tain, etc) and throw it in the fan along with all the poop. It's not OUR job to run around and find out whose fault it is. It's THEYR job to do it and make things right.


shobute, you looks like to be a somewhat insider, with much more acess than all of us togheter. I really hope you or some representative from the companyes involved comes out and clarify everything to us. We want to get our facts straight, we just can't becouse nobody cared enought to answer our questions.

If then again, nobody cares enought... oh well... take the names, the poop and the fan... as it is, it's the best we can do to try to prevent this kinda bull**** to happen again... this is exactly the kinda thing that really hurt online poker...
Betfold Poker(Ipoker) doesnt pay players and affiliates Quote
03-16-2010 , 09:48 AM
i think shobute is right.
There were a lot of rumours but we dont know what exactly was going on and what caused this mess.
i completely understand people making waves but there is and was too much agression and i would say the panic which was caused here at 2+2 didnt make thing better or even contributet to all the things that happened. maybe we should also think this way for a moment. However its absolutely okay to put the facts together and let the pokerworld know what happened. But please stop to flame around at this point. But little more information from Betfold or Playtech may have stopped this kind of agression, so i completely understand it!

btw friend of mine got paid yesterday. 1.8k$. Anyone else?

Last edited by illustro; 03-16-2010 at 09:53 AM.
Betfold Poker(Ipoker) doesnt pay players and affiliates Quote
03-16-2010 , 10:38 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by shobute

I will do a writeup of the situation in the next couple days as best I can.
im excited!

Quote:
Originally Posted by shobute

My general feeling from this thread is that most of you are not very aware of what has happened.
thanks captain obvious! how would we be when noone gives out information (not even fellow players like yourself..)
Betfold Poker(Ipoker) doesnt pay players and affiliates Quote
03-16-2010 , 11:05 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by illustro
There were a lot of rumours but we dont know what exactly was going on and what caused this mess.
Yeah... why exactly dont we know **** about what's going on again??

We want to get it straight. Imho, until cleared up, this is everyone's fault but the players.

I really hope someone speaks up and we get to know the facts, but so far we're left with air.

Scammers have to be flamed btw. Again, this hurts online poker a lot. We already have the UB scandal, ****ed up legislation, tax issues, withdraw problems here and there even on the biggest sites, the whole "online poker is rigged" thing and a lot of **** going against us. The last thing we need is players winning fair and square and not getting paid.
Betfold Poker(Ipoker) doesnt pay players and affiliates Quote
03-16-2010 , 11:51 AM
The "you dont have all the facts" is the story!! Thats it, 100%. And that is all we need to in our statement, or as i like to put it "we dont have any facts, because in three months we have gotten one single answer (except the "tehnical issues" for like two months ago)". Cant take people seriously who say we need more, better facts or whatever. No we dont, the lack of facts is the whole story - from a journalistic perspective.
Betfold Poker(Ipoker) doesnt pay players and affiliates Quote
03-16-2010 , 11:53 AM
Just got paid the $200 I cashed out on the 12th of this month....so only 4 days for it to hit my moneybookers is pretty good, and is a positive sign imo for those still waiting. Going to cash out another $400 now, will keep you updated.
Betfold Poker(Ipoker) doesnt pay players and affiliates Quote
03-16-2010 , 11:57 AM
ok wtf...I just logged in to my Betfold account and it's now saying "Your account is disabled, contact support"...WTF? I can see my $1821 sitting there but can't access the cashier.
Betfold Poker(Ipoker) doesnt pay players and affiliates Quote
03-16-2010 , 02:55 PM
Ok, I've been credited the remaining money to my moneybookers They just sent the cash over without me initiating the cash out. So that's me all paid up. I hope everyone else gets all the $$$'s they are owed.

Even though I have been paid my full amount I think the way ipoker/tain/whoever handled this was disgraceful.
Betfold Poker(Ipoker) doesnt pay players and affiliates Quote
03-16-2010 , 03:23 PM
Interesting. Looks like they're really shutting it down.
Betfold Poker(Ipoker) doesnt pay players and affiliates Quote
03-16-2010 , 05:44 PM
All,

The following is just what I have been able to gather from the people I have been in contact with.

I am NOT affiliated with any of the companies, I am NOT an "insider".
I am just a regular player who had money tied up in this mess.


My understanding of what has happened:

Betfold is formed by two main investors and has two other people who are the main day-to-day operators of the site.

In mid-December the investors felt that the operators had been creating bogus accounts and siphoning money out of the company and running up tabs at other businesses of one of the investors.
They called a meeting with the operators but the operators never showed up for the meeting.
A couple hundred thousand Euro was also missing from Betfold's accounts.
The investors went to the Malta police later that day and filed a police report, and the police confirmed that the two had left Malta for the UK.

At this point I think the investors were hoping that the police would be able to track down the two accused in the UK and bring them back to Malta and recover their funds.
There was still some level of support at Betfold and thus emails were still getting replies albeit slowly, and some money was still being paid to players as Betfold's funds allowed.
Emails had said Betfold had a backlog from the holidays and problems with payment processors, but they were working on resolving it ASAP.

I have limited details as to exactly has gone on with the companies involved as they tried to resolve this.

Now as for pursuing a resolution to this situation:

As far as I knew, my money was owed by Betfold; thus I researched who licensed Betfold.
The TOC for Betfold states that they are licensed in Curacao.
However if you look at the Curacao Gaming Authority (http://www.ciga.an/) and their dispute resolution procedure, they have no staff to handle complaints and seem to have no teeth: they simply forward the complaint to the company and ask them to resolve it.

This seemed like it would show little to no result, so I kept looking.
I found Betfold displayed the KGC logo on their main page.
Thus I opened a complaint with the KGC.
The KGC was extremely responsive and they had just updated their procedures and have a fairly strict timetable for companies to respond to and resolve complaints.
However immediately there was a problem: Betfold was not licensed by the KGC.
They released an advisory to that effect here: http://www.gamingcommission.ca/news/...Feb25-2010.pdf.
They did however continue to pursue my complaint, and discovered that an affiliated company Involve Poker Ltd. (which is essentially Tain as far as I am aware) is licensed under the KGC.
Thus they began talks with Involve Poker Ltd. in attempts to resolve the situation.

At the same time I had tracked down one of the investors in Malta and had been in contact with his attorney.
Their bottom line seemed to be that they would do anything they could to help bring this to a resolution, short of sinking more money of their own into the company.
This consisted of aggressively pursuing the legal arrest of the two accused operators, as well as lobbying Tain to step in and guarantee player funds.
They were very responsive to my questions and I spoke to the attorney on the phone.

This process continued for several weeks ultimately ending in Tain / Involve Poker Ltd. conceeding that it would cover players funds.
Thus they have been and are still in the process of putting funds into the merchant accounts and handling players debts.

It is my understanding that only Player funds are being covered.
Affiliate funds fall under a different classification than player funds.
And furthermore the KGC does not deal with affiliate issues.


My personal opinions:

We are receiving money mainly due to pressure from the Kahnawake Gaming Commission on Involve Poker Ltd. / Tain.
Their efforts are the only ones I can personally feel very confident actually occured; while both Playtech and the investors at Betfold say that they made efforts as well, the substance of these efforts is unknown to me.
The KGC has been absolutely amazing and I cannot speak highly enough of the efforts of all involved; including the complaints officer and their legal counsel.

We have all been incredibly foolish to enter into a situation with our money where we do not know who is involved or how to contact them.

I am 100% in agreement that this situation should have never been able to exist.
Player funds should be held in trust and guaranteed under player contracts and company license obligations.
All players should be aware of this after both the TUSK and Eurolinx issues.
Players need to know where their money is held, what companies are involved, and have some assurance that their money cannot dissappear.

I believe it is extremely naive to take the stance Playtech or iPoker or whoever should be responsible for the funds.
The reality is that these companies do not hold player funds under the current structure of the iPoker network.
While people could argue all day whether this should or should not be the case, at the end of the day that is the way it is and thus players need to act according to that fact.

In my opinion we are lucky that Involve Poker Ltd. / Tain is licensed by the KGC and is obligated to step up and meet the obligations.
If this were not the case and Betfold simply dissolved, I am afraid we would have all been out our money.
This mistake would rest squarely on the shoulders of players for not understanding how and where their money would be held.
From my reading of the Curacao Gaming Commission their policies would not have been able to recover our money from Betfold.

Ultimately I can understand the conundrum of the investors left at Betfold.
They had invested money into the company which has now allegedly been stolen from them along with player funds.
Should an investor be expected to step up to fill in this problem financially?
The way the company was setup it seems to me that they have no legal obligation to do so.
Betfold Poker(Ipoker) doesnt pay players and affiliates Quote
03-16-2010 , 06:08 PM
I'm so happy today, finally, after 6 month betfold payme my money.

Message in spanish.

Quote:
Ha recibido nuevos fondos
Estimado/a xxxx xxxx,

Saludos desde https://www.moneybookers.com. Nos complace informarle de que ha recibido un pago de Lifegaming (moneybookers@betfold.com).

Detalles de la transacción

Cantidad: USD xxxxx.xx
ID de transacción de Moneybookers: xxxxxxxxx
ID de transacción de este pago:
Detalle 1: Betfold Payments 1
Betfold Poker(Ipoker) doesnt pay players and affiliates Quote

      
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