While Investobet are obviously in favour of making sure that gambling is not used for nefarious purposes such as money laundering, it has been brought to our attention that such controls and checks can be easily abused by bookmakers to temporarily withhold payments from winning customers. It is more or less an established fact that some betting companies are deliberately slow to pay customers who have recently won substantial amounts, in the hope that these customers will keep playing and lose all or part of their winnings.
One ploy which can be used by betting companies wanting to slow down the outgoing payments is to process the documents sent by customers to verify addresses and identities slowly and eventually to demand more documentation, such as “selfies” where the customer holds his ID document next to his face. It is important to note that most requests for additional documents, including “selfies”, are completely legitimate.
However, I am also aware of many KYC (Know your Customer) processes dragging out several weeks or even months, where bookmakers are not accepting images that clearly should have been accepted.
The fact that Source of Wealth and Source of Funds processes are becoming more common due to the increased regulatory demands on the betting companies increases the arsenal of the bookmakers who unfairly wants to slow down the payment process of winning customers. Operators need to abide by European privacy laws and it is illegal for them to request irrelevant and unduly intrusive documents, but based on what I have seen in the past, it is almost like some betting.
We have lately been contacted by a member of the Investobet community who feels that Betway, an operator previously recommended by Investobet, is exploiting a SOW investigation to delay the payment of an amount in excess of 100 000 EUR. After reviewing the case and agreeing that Betway, is way out of line, we hooked him up with a Maltese lawyer to make sure that he has adequate legal advice.
It is important to realize that licensed operators face a lot of red tape and that identity and address checks is something the bookmakers are obliged to perform. The same will often hold true for SOW and SOF investigations. Just because you think you have been the victim of a betting company abusing such checks to deliberately slow pay you, it is far from sure that this actually is what is taking place. In my experience, most instances where a customer feels violated by an operator, amounts to nothing more than mere misunderstandings.
I am however curious as to how often betting companies are deliberately slow paying. Furthermore as this issue revolves around Betway, I am also interested to hear about other cases where Betway have or are violating the rights of their customers. If you have any information relevant to the above it would be appreciated if you would send a mail to support@investobet.com.
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